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ROBERT BURNS 

After tliu paintinj; by Alexander Nasniylh 



CARLYLE'S 



ESSAY ON BURNS 




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EDITED BY 



CHARLES L. HANSON 

Teacher of English in the Mechanic Arts 
High School, Boston 




1 



GINN & COMPANY 

BOSTON • NEW YORK • CHICAGO • LONDON 




31 






Copyright, 1897 
By CHARLES L. HANSON 



ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 
714-3 







C!)f 3tbfnatum J)re«£f 

GI.NN & COMPANY • TRO- 
PKIETORS . BOSTON • U.S.A. 



TO 

MY BURNS SECTION 

OF THE CLASS OF I898 
WORCESTER ENGLISH HIGH SCHOOL 

APPRECIATIVE, SYMPATHETIC 
EAGER TO LEARN 



The memory of Bums, — every man's, every boy's 
and girl's head carries snatches of his songs, and they 
say them by heart, and, what is strangest of all, never 
learned them from a book, but from mouth to mouth. 
The wind whispers them, the birds whistle them, the 
com, barley, and bulrushes hoarsely rustle them, nay, 
the music boxes at Geneva are framed and toothed 
to play them ; the hand organs of the Savoyards in 
all cities repeat them, and the chimes of bells ring 
them in the spires. They are the property and the 
solace of mankind. 

Ralph Waldo Emerson. 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

The Mission of the Essay on ^urns .... vii 

List of Select Poems ix 

Outline of the Life of Burns xi 

Outline of the Life of Carlyle xvii 

Burns and Carlyle ..,.,... xxi 

Essay on Burns . » o . . » » . . i 

Notes , « . 71 

Carlyle's Summary of the Essay 80 

Reference Books 82 



THE MISSION OF THE ESSAY ON BURNS. 



The poems of ^n^s are J iis best biography. They 
should be read in oh ron oTJ^car or de r and in an edition with 
notes. The list which follows includes enough to give one 
a fair notion of what the poet accomplished in his lifelong 
struggle. Perhaps it would be well to read those without 
the asterisk (*) first. In this connection the short account 
of Burns's life may be helpful, and the reading of the poet 
and of his life will enable one to appreciate and enjoy 
Carlyle. 

Burns first, then Carlyle, then more Burns. If the use of 
the glossary becomes tiresome, remember t hat the Scotch 
dialect is " the only example in history of a language made 
classic by th e geni us of a single' TTrair^ — — ^ 

Phillips Brooks, "mspeakingor^a biography, once said to 
the Phillips Exeter boys, " Your reading will be a live thing 
if you can feel the presence of your two companions, and 
make them, as it were, feel yours." Carlyle has introduced 
us to Burns so happily that there is no excuse for our not 
following this and another suggestion given in the same lec- 
ture : "Never lay the biography down until the man is a 
living, breathing, acting person. Then you may close and 
lose and forget the book ; the man is yours forever." 

Time and again I have been surprised and delighted, after 
reading a tolerably good account of the poet, to find the 
substance of it in a form much jnore compact and beautiful 
in Carlyle's Essay. CarMe's point of view is so admirable; 

,♦' • vii 



viii THE MISSION OF THE ESSAY ON BURNS. 

his criticism is so comprehensive, so fair, so sympathetic ; 
his introduction of biographical material is so effective in 
interpreting the life and the work of Burns, that if we read 
it and reread it, if we absorb it, we shall soon come to know 
tibe peasant^oet. The man, his life, and his work are pecu- 
lisftfy inseparable. Failure to recognize this has been re- 
sponsible for numberless misconceptions and useless discus- 
sions of Burns. Carlyle's recognition of it and his skill in 
treating the three subjects as one have enabled him to 
make many a valuable criticism. 



LIST OF SELECT POEMS. 



Juvenile. Handsome Nell. — A Prayer, Written under the 
Pressure of Violent Anguish. 

1781-86. Mary Morison. — The Death and Dying Words of 
Poor Alailie. — * My Nanie, O. — Green Grow the Rashes. — 

* Epistle to Davie. — * Rantin Rovin Robin. — Address to the 
Deil. — * Death and Dr. Hornbrook. — * Epistle to J. Lapraik. — 

* Epistle to William Simson, — Holy Willie's Prayer. — To the 
Rev. John M'Math. — To a Mouse. — Second Epistle to Davie. — 
Man was Made to Mourn. — The Cotter's Saturday Night. — 

* Halloween. — * The Auld Farmer's New-Year Morning Saluta- 
tion to his Auld Mare, Maggie. — The Twa Dogs. — * Epistle to 
James Smith. — * The Vision. — Address to the Unco Guid, or 
the Rigidly Righteous. — To__a_Lquse. — To a Mountain Daisy. 

— The Lament. — Will Ye Go to the Indies, my Mary? — Epistle 
to a Young Friend. — *A Dream. — The Highland Lassie, O. — 
A Bard's Epitaph. — A Winter Night. — Prayer for Mary. — The 
Lass o' Ballochmyle. — Verses Left in the Room where he Slept. 

— * Farewell, the Bonie Banks of Ayr. — * Address to Edinburgh. 
1787. To Mrs. Scot. — Inscription for the Tomb of Ferguson. 

— Come, Boat Me O'er to Charlie. — *The Birks of Aberfeldy. 

— The Banks of the Devon. — Blythe was she. — M'Pherson's 

Farewell. J^J, ^/.ftC' 

1788-96. X ^ Love rfiy J ean. — Auld Lang Syne. — John 
Anderson, my Jo. — O, Were I on rarnassus' HiH. — The 
Banks of Nith. — Tarn Glen. — Verses on a Wounded Hare. — 
Willie Brew'd a Peck o' Maut. — To Mary in Heaven. — * To 
Dr. Blacklock. — * On Captain Grose's Peregrinations thro' Scot- 
land. — * On Captain Matthew Henderson. — Tam o' Shanter. — 
The Banks o' Doon. — - Lament of Mary, Queen of Scots, on the 

ix 



X LIST OF SELECT POEMS. 

Approach of Spring. — * Lament for James, Earl of Glencairn. — 
♦Poem on Pastoral Poetry. — Flow Gently, Sweet Afton. — Ae 
Fond Kiss. — * Bessie and her Spinnin' Wheel. — Bonie Lesley. 

— * Highland Mary. — Duncan Gray. — * Gala Water. — Young 
Jessie. — The Soldier's Return. — * Logan Braes, — There was a 
Lass. — * Dainty Davie. — * Wandering Willie. — Bannockburn. 

— O, my Luve 's like a Red, Red Rose. — *It was the Charming 
Month of May. — * Lassie wi' the Lint-White Locks. — My 
Chloris. — * Contented wi' Little. — 4,_Man_'s a Man for a' That^ 

— * ThqiPupi^ries Volunteers. — Address to the Woodlark. — O, 
''art thb%il iXUe^ Cauld Blast. 




OUTLINE OF THE LIFE OF BURNS. 



In the southwest corner of Scotland, on the coast, some 
thirty miles from Glasgow, is the little town of Ayr. It was 
in a two-roomed cottage near by that Robert Burns was 
born. He inherited from his strict, sturdy father a proud, 
quick temper ; from his mother the love of song. Besides 
his birthplace. Burns had three other homes in Ayrshire, — 
Mount Oliphant, Lochlea, and Mossgicl. 

Robert was a lad of seven when his father undertook to 
earn a living on the small upland farm of Mount Oliphant. 
He worked like a slave to do his part, as oldest boy, towards 
supporting the family. His regular attendance at school 
ended in his ninth year. After that he spent a fcv/ weeks 
at a time in several schools for some special purpose, but 
his principal teacher was his father. The one luxury that 
this wise father allowed himself was a library. Many books 
that he could not buy he would borrow ; and in the gloom 
that enshrouds this life of incessant toil, which impaired per- 
manently the physical and mental powers of the poet, there 
is certainly one bright spot. Although the Burns boys 
rarely saw anybody but their own family, they had in their 
father a companion v/ho made it his business to educate his 
children. The fact must not be overlooked that Robert 
read, besides many other authors, Addison, Pope, Richard- 
son, Smollett, Milton, and Shakspere. He was an eager 
and industrious reader. He absorbed much of the Bible, 
and of A Select Collection of English Songs, his vac^e mecuntj 

xi 



Xll OUTLINE OF THE LIFE OF BURNS. 

he writes : ''I pored over them driving my cart, or walking 
to labor, song by song, verse by verse — carefully noting the 
tender or sublime from affectation and fustian." 

Into this monotonous life of drudgery and economy, 
brightened by the interesting reading and the profitable 
conversation that the worthy Scotsman so persistently intro- 
duced, came a new element; when in his fifteenth year 
Robert fell in love with the girl who was his partner in har- 
vesting, and wrote *' Handsome Nell," his first song. Later 
he wrote in his Commonplace Book, "I never had the least 
thought ... of turning Poet till I got once heartily in Love, 
and then Rhyme and Song were, in a manner, the sponta- 
neous language of my heart." Henceforth, as he himself said, 
this bit of tinder was " eternally lighted up by some Goddess 
or other." 

After twelve years of patient toil in Mount Oliphant, the 
Burns family removed to Lochlea, in the parish of Tarbolton. 
Here they lived in a similar way, but more comfortably, dur- 
ing the following seven years. Robert made several varia- 
tions in the routine of life. For a time he studied mensura- 
tion and surveying at Kirkoswald, a village full of smugglers 
and adventurers. Soon afterward he entered heartily into 
the founding and supporting of a debating society, the 
Bachelors' Club. According to his brother, he was in the 
secret of half the love affairs of the parish of Tarbolton, and 
was never without at least one of his own. 

In his twenty-third year he tried, but in vain, to win the 
affections of a certain farmer's daughter. Much depressed, 
he then went to Irvine to learn flax-dressing. " In Irvine," 
writes his brother Gilbert, " he contracted some acquaintance 
of a freer manner of thinking and living than he had been 
used to, whose society prepared him for overleaping the 
bounds of rigid virtue which had hitherto restrained him. 
During this period, also, he became a Freemason, which was 



OUTLINE OF THE LIFE OF BURNS. xiii 

his first introduction to the life of a boon companion." But 
his melancholy grew on him, and his business venture proved 
a failure ; he returned to Lochlea, worked as hard as ever 
on the farm, and, if we may believe Gilbert, was frugal and 
temperate. He found time to be social and to write poems 
and songs. 

His father had lived to see something of the poet's skill, 
but he died soon afterward, anxious lest the young man 
should prove lacking in will power. 

Robert and Gilbert now leased the small farm of Mossgiel, 
near the village of Mauchline. In spite of the older son's 
determination and persistent efforts, the crops were a failure 
for two successive seasons, and the farmer lost heart. Yet, 
unfortunate as he was in his farming, undiscriminating and 
imprudent as he was in his wooing, he was so generous 
socially, and so frank to confess his follies that he had 
many friends among the worthy people of Ayrshire. The 
generous-hearted, upright Gavin Hamilton and the affection- 
ate, cultured Robert Aiken encouraged, in many ways, the 
young poet who was industriously composing in the field 
and writing out at a deal table in the humble farmhouse a 
notable collection of verse. At Hamilton's suggestion, he 
published his first volume of poetry. There was no doubt 
that the author of this volume, although only twenty-six years 
old, was a genius. 

This important event was quickly followed by another. 
The natural way for him to gain the attention of Scotland 
was by making himself known at Scotland's capital ; so he 
went to Edinburgh. The reputation of the poet attracted 
the attention of the curious. The charm of the conversa- 
tionalist held spellbound citizens of the highest rank. The 
pride and assurance of the Ayrshire plowman lent to his 
modesty and winsomeness a freedom and vigor that proved 
irresistibly fascinating. Naturally enough, in answer to the 



XIV OUTLINE OF THE LIFE OF BURNS. 

demand of his worshipers, a second edition of his poems 
was published within six months of his coming to the Scot- 
tish capital. In spite of all this flattering attention, Burns 
did not once lose his head. 

During the summer and autumn he traveled in Scotland. 
After a Border tour, a brief visit with his family at Mossgiel, 
and three Highland tours, he returned to Edinburgh to 
spend the winter. 

To one whose interest in the localities of Scottish song 
was so keen, the excursion must have been profitable in 
many ways, and it was altogether timely, for Burns had 
begun to specialize. He had tried his hand at satirical, 
descriptive, and lyrical verse. But now he was busily col- 
lecting material for the occupation on which he was to 
focus his energy in the future. Hitherto a poet, he was 
henceforth to be a singer. 

About the second winter in Edinburgh there is little 
glamor. The aristocracy were not so hospitable, but Burns 
was prepared for their coolness. Whatever his friends 
might have done for him, had he asked assistance, it is 
to his credit that he accepted their freely offered aid in 
helping him to a farm and a position in the excise so grace- 
fully that they seemed to think they were giving him what 
he was eager to get, instead of what he was patiently making 
up his mind to endure. 

Burns was by no means unhappy when he married Jean 
Armour and settled down on the farm at Ellisland. As 
exciseman he had to ride some two hundred miles a week, 
and naturally people took pride in entertaining a guest at 
once so distinguished and so agreeable. After a stormy 
day's travel it must have been real recreation for the poet 
to doff his official dignity and enter heartily into the home 
life of friends, sometimes opening his whole soul in his 
artless way. 



OUTLINE OF THE LIFE OF BURNS. xv 

But his duties did not always keep the real man in the back- 
ground. A diligent officer, severe with regular smugglers, 
he was merciful Robert Burns when he dealt with country 
brewers and retailers. He also took delight in working for 
the permanent good of his fellow-men. Long before there 
was any national movement in this direction, he set on foot 
a plan for the intellectual improvement of the community 
by taking an active part in establishing a public library. 
And while trying to do the work of two or three men, one 
day seizing a cargo of tobacco from an unlucky smuggler, 
the next punishing some poor wretch for selling liquor with- 
out a license, the same evening writing a beautiful poem, he 
did not lose sight of his high ideal of the mission of a poet. 
As in his Mossgiel days, he still " rhymed for fun"; he often 
wrote as a favor to a friend, but he could not bear the 
thought of writing for money. 

During this period of hard work he had been buoyed up 
by the hope of promotion, but he found he must for the 
present give up the longed-for supervisorship and content 
himself with being an ordinary exciseman in Dumfries. 
Upon receiving the appointment, with a salary of seventy 
pounds, he gave up the farm, which had proved a losing 
investment, and in 1791 took a house of three rooms in this 
little town. 

It was a time of revolution ; a time when quiet, pensive 
poets were stirred to their hearts' core. The excitement of 
the patriotic Burns, keenly sensitive to the welfare of Scot- 
land, and especially of her peasants, at times knew no 
bounds. His sympathy for those who were trying to secure 
their rights through the French Revolution led to vigorous 
expressions of his ideas of liberty. Yet he was a govern- 
ment official. Loyal as he was, he was accused of disloyalty, 
and came very near losing his position. The tongue-tied 
poet felt keenly that the world was going wrong and that he 



XIV OUTLINE OF THE LIFE OF BURNS. 

demand of his worshipers, a second edition of his poems 
was published within six months of his coming to the Scot- 
tish capital. In spite of all this flattering attention, Burns 
did not once lose his head. 

During the summer and autumn he traveled in Scotland. 
After a Border tour, a brief visit with his family at Mossgiel, 
and three Highland tours, he returned to Edinburgh to 
spend the winter. 

To one whose interest in the localities of Scottish song 
was so keen, the excursion must have been profitable in 
many ways, and it was altogether timely, for Burns had 
begun to specialize. He had tried his hand at satirical, 
descriptive, and lyrical verse. But now he was busily col- 
lecting material for the occupation on which he was to 
focus his energy in the future. Hitherto a poet, he was 
henceforth to be a singer. 

About the second winter in Edinburgh there is little 
glamor. The aristocracy were not so hospitable, but Burns 
was prepared for their coolness. Whatever his friends 
might have done for him, had he asked assistance, it is 
to his credit that he accepted their freely offered aid in 
helping him to a farm and a position in the excise so grace- 
fully that they seemed to think they were giving him what 
he was eager to get, instead of what he was patiently making 
up his mind to endure. 

Burns was by no means unhappy when he married Jean 
Armour and settled down on the farm at Ellisland. As 
exciseman he had to ride some two hundred miles a week, 
and naturally people took pride in entertaining a guest at 
once so distinguished and so agreeable. After a stormy 
day's travel it must have been real recreation for the poet 
to doff his official dignity and enter heartily into the home 
life of friends, sometimes opening his whole soul in his 
artless way. 



OUTLINE OF THE LIFE OF BURNS. xv 

But his duties did not always keep the real man in the back- 
ground. A diligent officer, severe with regular smugglers, 
he was merciful Robert Burns when he dealt with country 
brewers and retailers. He also took delight in working for 
the permanent good of his fellow-men. Long before there 
was any national movement in this direction, he set on foot 
a plan for the intellectual improvement of the community 
by taking an active part in establishing a public library. 
And while trying to do the work of two or three men, one 
day seizing a cargo of tobacco from an unlucky smuggler, 
the next punishing some poor wretch for selling liquor with- 
out a license, the same evening writing a beautiful poem, he 
did not lose sight of his high ideal of the mission of a poet. 
As in his Mossgiel days, he still " rhymed for fun"; he often 
wrote as a favor to a friend, but he could not bear the 
thought of writing for money. 

During this period of hard work he had been buoyed up 
by the hope of promotion, but he found he must for the 
present give up the longed-for supervisorship and content 
himself with being an ordinary exciseman in Dumfries. 
Upon receiving the appointment, with a salary of seventy 
pounds, he gave up the farm, which had proved a losing 
investment, and in 1791 took a house of three rooms in this 
little town. 

It was a time of revolution ; a time when quiet, pensive 
poets were stirred to their hearts' core. The excitement of 
the patriotic Burns, keenly sensitive to the welfare of Scot- 
land, and especially of her peasants, at times knew no 
bounds. His sympathy for those who were trying to secure 
their rights through the French Revolution led to vigorous 
expressions of his ideas of liberty. Yet he was a govern- 
ment official. Loyal as he was, he was accused of disloyalty, 
and came very near losing his position. The tongue-tied 
poet felt keenly that the world was going wrong and that he 



XVI OUTLINE OF THE LIFE OF BURNS. 

was in no position to help right it. But the storm blew 
over; Burns afterwards took an active part in fighting for a 
Liberal in an election contest, and those friends who had 
carefully prevented the printing of many of his productions 
allowed the publication of several ballads that once would 
have been condemned. 

There were intervals during this period in which he did 
almost no literary work. Much of his time was spent in 
helping Johnson make his collection of songs for his Scots 
Musical Museutn and in contributing to Thomson's more 
ambitious and better edited work, the Melodies of Scotland. 
Meanwhile he was growing more melancholy. After settling 
in Dumfries the family lived in comparative comfort, yet 
toward the end of his life they were reduced to narrow 
straits. Outside of his home he had to encounter the con- 
tempt of the Dumfries aristocracy, but he recovered from 
their abuse and refused to part with his good humor. In 
his gloom he sought relief in " the merry song and the flow- 
ing bowl." At times he got real help and comfort and hope 
from religion. It was under such circumstances that he 
kept on writing songs. 

Scotland had waited for her poet till the latter half of the 
eighteenth century — a long time. Even then he was des- 
tined to lead a life of incessant toil as a farmer and ganger, 
while his real work had to be done incidentally. His 
friends, recognizing his genius, had introduced him to 
Edinburgh, and so to Scotland ; he was becoming w-idely 
known, and was doing some of his best work, when, at the 
age of thirty-seven, he suddenly died. 



OUTLINE OF THE LIFE OF CARLYLE. 



Thomas Carlyle, born in 1795, seven months before Burns 
died, was the son of a frugal, undemonstrative father, a stone 
mason, and a worthy, intelligent mother. At their home in 
Ecclefechan his mother taught him to read, his father to 
count. In his seventh year the report came from the 
village school that he was " complete " in English. In 1809, 
after three years at a " doleful and hateful Academy," he 
began his five years' hermit course at Edinburgh University. 
He studied for the ministry, as his father wished, but could 
not conscientiously make that his life work. He says of 
this miserable period, " I was without friends, experience, 
or connection in the sphere of human business, was of sly 
humor, proud enough and to spare, and had begun my 
long curriculum of dyspepsia which has never ended since." 
The question was, what should he do for a living .? The 
very difficulties in the way spurred him on to become a 
lawyer. To study law he needed money. To earn the 
money he taught school. But he could not tolerate the 
schoolmaster's drudgery, and gave up teaching; mean- 
while he had studied law long enough to abandon it gladly 
on the ground that its miseries would lead to no reward but 
money. 

At this point in his career Carlyle received substantial 
help from others. He owed much to a college friend, 
Edward Irving, who introduced him to Miss Jane Welsh, 



XVlll OUTLINE OF THE LIFE OF CARLYLE. 

the witty, fascinating daughter of a country surgeon. The 
next year Irving helped him to some tutoring in London. 
He soon gave that up for Hterary work. Dyspepsia and 
*' the noises " drove him from the metropolis to a little farm 
at Hoddam Hill. There he spent a quiet year making 
translations from the German. Forty years later he referred 
to it as " perhaps the most triumphantly important " of his 
life. " He was building up his character," says Mr. John 
Nichol, *' and forming the opinions which, with few mate- 
rial changes, he long continued to hold." He found his 
skepticisms and his agonizing doubtings giving way to quiet, 
spontaneous communings with Nature. 

After many wearisome attempts to obtain recognition he 
saw that his life work was to be literature. In 1826, at the 
age of thirty-one, he married Miss Welsh. They began 
housekeeping in a cottage at Comely Bank, Edinburgh. 
Mrs. Carlyle was so charming a hostess that she attracted 
to their home more than one literary friend. Among the 
most devoted was Jeffrey, the editor of the Edinburgh 
Review. Before the end of another year, Carlyle had made 
the beginning of a literary reputation. For no sympathy 
was the young, struggling writer more grateful than for the 
genuine admiration shown by Goethe, foremost genius of 
the age, who recognized him as " a moral force of great 
importance." 

But so far he had made only a beginning. He received 
so little for his writings that, for the sake of economy and 
quiet, he retired to Craigenputtock. Here it was, fifteen 
miles from Dumfries, five from the nearest neighbor, in a 
farmhouse amidst the dreary moorland, that Carlyle wrote 
the Essay on Burns. It appeared in the Edinburgh Rcvieiv 
in December, 1828. During his six years of Craigenputtock 
life, the monotony of which was relieved by Emerson's 
memorable visit and several months spent in London and 



OUTLINE OF THE LIFE OF CARLYLE. xix 

Edinburgh, he wrote most of his biographical and critical 
essays and Sartor Resartus. 

His youth had been spent amid bleak surroundings under 
the care of parents whom he revered and loved. Then came 
the struggle to know himself and to determine his position 
in the universe. All this prepared the way for his life in 
London. 

He went to London in 1834 with little fame, less money, 
and few friends. He had written the Fre7ich Revolutioii and 
Hero- Worship^ and had resorted to the ugly expedient of 
lecturing, before the tardy recognition of the value of his 
work insured him a living. He still worked industriously, 
producing literature that gave abundant evidence of his 
independence in politics and religion. Then came the 
death of his mother, who, and who only, says Froude, " had 
stood between him and the loneliness of which he had so 
often and so passionately complained." 

He withdrew from the world more than ever for the 
" desperate dead-lift pull " with his great History of Frie- 
drich II. The result of his painful struggles was a triumph 
recognized in Scotland, England, and Germany. His own 
countrymen eagerly elected him Lord Rector of Edinburgh. 
His unique address to the students excited unbounded 
enthusiasm. It was the proudest, most joyous day of his 
life. But in the midst of his triumph his wife died. 
Stunned by her sudden death, he realized for the first 
time what she had been to him. He entered without 
warning the saddest period of his life. His fame was 
secure, but it had come too late. He cared little for it now 
that he could not share it with her. Success and failure 
were empty sounds. Yet the last years have an interest of 
their own. He had always been benevolent, eager to help 
the working classes ; and as his own affliction increased he 
became still more eager to aid those in distress. Nor was 



XX OUTLINE OF THE LIFE OF CARLYLE. 

he himself neglected. Painters, sculptors, literary men, and 
disciples were bent on preserving the fame of the venerable 
Chelsea Prophet. Best of all, firm friends stood by him in 
his need and comforted him. Clearly, he did not find age a 
*' crown of thorns "; yet he was haunted by 

*' To-morrow and to-morrow and to-morrow." 

He died in February, iS8i, at the age of eighty-five. In 
accordance with his own wish, he was buried in Ecclefechan 
with his kindred, rather than in Westminster Abbey. 



BURNS AND CARLYLE. 



We naturally ask why Carlyle should write an account of 
Burns. He was preeminently the man to do it. The two 
men had much in .common. In the first place, they were 
Scotchmen ; more than that, they were Lowlanders. Of 
pea sant b irth, they began life in insignificant hamlets, and 
were brought up under similar home influences. Both 
had_fathers notable for their integrity and independence. 
Neither was mucITindebted to the schools for his early 
education, but both were helped and encouraged by far- 
-seeing, ambitious parents. The lads enjoyed books and 
read eagerly and widely. So much for their boyhood. 

Each had to fight for a place in the world. Carlyle 
struggled for several years To secufG^^rr "Hi eager competence. 
With all his hard work. Burns barely made a living. The 
following statement about Carlyle applies quite as well to 
Burns : He rose — " not by birth or favor, not on the ladder 
of any established profession, but only by the internal force 
that was in him — t o the highest place as a modern man of 
Jetters." "^^^ ^"""^ '" ' 

Both were entertained at the Scottish capital, and both 
stood the test. Burns was not spoiled ; Carlyle was b ored. 
In his /Reminiscences^ the dyspeptic writes of the "effulgences 
of ' Edinburgh society,' big dinners, parties," that it all passed 
away as "an obliging pageant merely." In spite of it, Burns 
retained his sincerity, his " indisputable air of Truth " ; in 
spite of it, too, Carlyle remained thoroughly genuine. 



xxil BUKAS AND CARLYLE. 



Xo ward mankind their attitudes wer e very d ifferent, but 
neither hesitated to say just what he thoiight or"p^Tsons he 
cHd not Hke ; neitlnr wasted any sympathy on the upper 
clas§eS^1)oth urged ilicm to remember that those under 
them were human and were to be treated as men. Yet 
neither derived entire satisfaction from his rehitions with his 
fellowsr~~^Qth were often heavy-hearted. The melancholy 
of the one is as genuine as the melancholy of the other. 
Burns had the happy faculty of turning his into gayety, but 
Carlyle, with all his humor, could get only partial relief. 

Both are said to have been lovable men. We know 
Burns must liave been particularly lovable, and we may be 
interested in the testimony of an Aberdonian, who said, " I 
know Carlyle, and I avor to you that his heart was as 
large and generous as liis brain was powerful ; that he was 
essentially a most lovable man, and that there were depths 
of tenderness, kindliness, benevolence, and most delicate 
courtesy in him, with all his seeming ruggedness and stern- 
ness, such as I have found throughout my life rarely in any 
human being." ^\x. Froude says that when we know him 
fully, we shall not love or admire him the less "because he 
had intirmities like the rest of us." 

\Vc recognize Burns as a natural poet. "The intensity of 
Carlyle's vision,^' says li \x, "Joh n T^ichol, ' ' was that of a born 
artist." He adds, " None of our poets, from Chaucer and 
Dunbar to Burns and Tennyson, have been more alive to 
the intluences of external nature." 

As men of genius, they have been grouped, not with the 
Miltons and the Sliaksperes, but with those who are like 
'* the wind-harp which answers to the breath that touches it, 
now low and sweet, now rising into wild swell or angry 
scream, as the strings are swept by some passing gust." 

Ijyrns was a prophet-poet. He saw and thought and 
spoke for the Nvt^Ttd: — frniTe vigorous Scotch way, he " spoke 



liUKNS AND CAKLYLK. xxiii 

out." Carlyle was a pioplu't. " The mission of the 
Hebrew prophet," says Mr. Macpherson, "was by passion- 
ate utterance to keep aHve in the minds of his countrymen 
a deep, abiding; sense of life's mystery, sacredness, and 
solemnity. V Vliat Isaiah did for his day ('Milylc did for 

Such was the man, then, who helps us interpret Scotland's 

darling poet. Carlyle speaks for Scotland. His is the 

tender voice of the fond mother, who, though confident that 

her son, 

•' Who lives immortal in the hearts of men," 

will never die, yet loves to tell us, her eyes now tearful, now 
glowing with a mother's pride, about her boy. All this so 
simply, so naturally, so heartily, with a pathos like Burns's 
own that softens beautifully the stern, rugged Carlyle. 



It would be dlfTuMill (o find two viciil ituii about whorn 
therel" ^^ b (( n moic clillt rc'nce oijiiiilUiin. Carlyle has 
been called " al)oul tiu; most cantankerous Scotchman that 
ever maltreated the Knglish tongue." Mr. Richard Carnett, 
on the other hand, says that Carlyle's supremacy as a literary 
genius is attested by the fact that he is one of the very few 
in whose hands language is wholly flexible and fusible, and 
adds, " Great and deathless writer as he was, he will be 
honored by posterity for his influence on human life rather 
than for his supremacy as a literary artist." As to this in- 
lluence on human life, the dying witness of John Sterling was : 
" Towards England no man has been and done like you." 
And Froude once wrote : ** Leaving out Goethe, Carlyle was 
indisputably the greatest man (if you measure greatness by 
the permanent ellect he has and will produce on the minds 



XXIV BURNS AND CARLYLE. 

of mankind) who has appeared in Europe for centuries. 
His character was as remarkable as his intellect. There 
has been no man at all, not Goethe himself, who in thought 
and action was so consistently true to his noblest instincts." 
As for Burns, criticise him as severely as you please, 
some of his best poetry will live forever as pure poetry. 
Wordsworth is not the only one whom Burns has shov/n 

" How verse may build a j^rinccly throne 
On humble truth," 

and careless, even indifferent readers can hardly help feel- 
ing that in some of his work 

" the passion and the pain 
Of hearts that long have ceased to beat remain 
To throb in hearts that are, or arc to be." 

There was nothing half-hearted about him. If he was 
independent, he was so independent that " no man ever 
existed who could look down on him. They that looked 
into his eyes saw that they might look down the sky as 
easily." In__striking^ontrast to this fearlessness was his 
sympathy, — Burns's sympathy, large, whole-souled, world- 
wide, enough {ox all mankind, uifb pTp^^j^tn <;pnrp fnr pv^rj 
mvingjhing, and a drop left over for the deuT 

If at times he^TiTriied -tc flchcr, -iiii> teacrhwg was sound, 
and so effective that it was not to be forgotten. To be 
sure, he used satire so vigorously that he shocked some 
of his readers. That was their fault, not Burns's ; they 
needed the shaking up. But one cannot separate his_satire 
from his humor, — his joyous, rollicking, irresistible humor^ 
" His humor and his wit scorched into cinders whole heca- 
tombs of hypocrites and knaves, and his name is one at 
which * Holy Willies ' of all degrees and homicidal Dr. 
Hornbrooks, both with and without degrees, ought to 
tremble." 



BC/AWS AND CAKLYLE. 



XXV 



• jllow^najurallyand fully these characteristics blend in 
Burns, —j^um or, wit, g ood sense, satire, independence, sym- 
pathy, — ^>a|H^ve all, sym lKritiy"^ 

He was a man who k rre w m e n and how to appeal to men. 
When he spoke to his neighbors, he spoke with a voice that 
men everywhere understood. He has been called pr o vin- 
^cial ; he was also national and univ ersa l. And I care not 

■admiration for his love of 



how many are our expressions 
nature, l^LL-de scriptions of sc ene ry, his graphic powe r , his 
terse^ lucid , forcible^ often elega nt styl e ; back of the great 
artist we must see the sincere ln5tTr^ li is own simple way 
dealing directly with human life. 

His earlier work consisted largely of satires, descriptions 
of country life, and epistles. Afterward he drifted more 
and more into song-writing. It may be worth while to con- 
sider the question whether the miscellaneous poems show 
more clearly the greatness of the poet; but long after we 
have forgotten most of them, I fancy, we shall be sing- 
ing the songs. Exactly why it may be hard to tell. He 
expresses beautifully what we know to be true. He sings 
tunefully what we have often felt. Other poets have done 
this for us; but there is something subtle about Burns's way 
of doing it. We sometimes feel that others have made an 
effort to speak for us and to please us. Somehow we get 
the impression that Burns's writing was as unstudied, as 
natural, as spontaneous as his breathing. Many of the 
songs seem to have written themselves, and we find our- 
selves singing them as if they were our own. Other poets 
we like and admire; to some extent we may make them 
ours — Burns in his own winning way charms us; before we 
know it, we are his. 




B U R N S.i 

[1828.] 

In the modern arrangements of society, it is no uncom- 
mon thing that a man of genius must, like Butler, 'ask 
for bread and receive a stone ;' for, in spite of our grand 
maxim of supply and demand, it is by no means the 
highest excellence that men are most forward to recognise. 5 
The inventor of a spinning-jenny is pretty sure of his 
reward in his own day; but the writer of a true poem, like 
the apostle of a true religion, is nearly as sure of the 
contrary. We do not know whether it is not an aggra- 
vation of the injustice, that there is generally a posthu- 10 
mo us retribution. Robert Burns, in the course of Nature, 
might yet have been living; but his short life was spent 
in toil and penury ; and he died, in the prime of his man- 
hood, miserable and neglected: and yet already a brave 

Lausoleum shines over his dust, and more than one 15 
splendid monument has been reared in other places to 
his fame; the street where he languished in poverty is 
called by his name ; the highest personages in our litera- 
ture have been proud to appear as his commentators and 
admirers ; and here is the sixth narrative of his Life that 20 
has been given to the world ! 

Mr. Lockhart thinks it necessary to apologise for this 
new attempt on such a subject : but his readers, we 
believe, will readily acquit him ; or, at worst, will censure 
only the performance of his task, not the choice of it. 25 
The character of Burns, indeed, is a theme that cannot 

1 Edinburgh Review, No. 96. — The Life of Robert Burns. By 
J. G. Lockhart, LL.B. Edinburgh, 1828. 



2 BURNS. 

easily become either trite or exhausted ; and will probably 
gain rather than lose in its dimensions by the distance to 
which it is removed by Time. No man, it has been said, 
is a hero to his valet ; and this is probably true ; but the 
5 fault is at least as likely to be the valet's as the hero's. 
For it is certain, that to the vulgar eye few things are 
wonderful that are not distant. It is difficult for men to 
believe that the man, the mere man whom they see, nay 
perhaps painfully feel, toiling at their side through the 

lo poor jostlings of existence, can be made of finer clay than 
themselves. Suppose that some dining acquaintance of 
Sir Thomas Lucy's, and neighbour of John a Combe's, had 
snatched an hour or two from the preservation of his 
game, and written us a Life of Shakspeare! What 

15 dissertations should we not have had, — not on Hamlet 
and The Te7npest., but on the wool-trade, and deer-stealing, 
and the libel and vagrant laws ; and how the Poacher 
became a Player ; and how Sir Thomas and Mr. John had 
Christian bowels, and did not push him to extremities ! 

20 In like manner, we believe, with respect to Burns, that 
till the companions of his pilgrimage, the Honourable 
Excise Commissioners, and the Gentlemen of the Cale- 
donian Hunt, and the Dumfries Aristocracy, and all the 
Squires and Earls, equally with the Ayr Writers, and the 

25 New and Old Light Clergy, whom he had to do with 
shall have become invisible in the darkness of the Past, 
or visible only by light borrowed from his juxtaposition, 
it will be difficult to measure him by any tmestancRTd, 
or to estimate what he really was and did, in the 

30 eighteenth century, for his country and the world. It 
will be difficult, we say; but still a fair problem for 
literary historians; and repeated attempts will give us 
repeated approximations. 

His former Biographers have done something, no 



BURNS. 3 

doubt, but by no means a great deal, to assist us. Dr. 
Currie and Mr. Walker, the principal of these writers, have 
both, we think, mistaken one essentially important thing: 
Their own and the world's true relation to their author, 
and the style in which it became such men to think and 5 
to speak of such a man. Dr. Currie loved the poet truly; 
more perhaps than he avowed to his readers, or even to 
himself ; yet he everywhere introduces him with a certain 
patronising, apologetic air; as if the polite public might 
think it strange and half unwarrantable that he, a man of 10 
science, a scholar and gentleman, should do such honour 
to a rustic. In all this, however, we readily admit that 
his fault was not want of love, but weakness of faith ; and 
regret that the first and kindest of all our poet's 
biographers should not have seen farther, or believed 15 
more boldly what he saw. Mr. Walker offends more 
deeply in the same kind: and both err alike in presenting 
us with a detached catalogue of his several supposed 
attributes, virtues and vices, instead of a delineation of 
the resulting character as a living unity. This, however, 20 
is not painting a portrait ; but gauging the length and 
breadth of the several features, and jotting down their 
dimensions in arithmetical ciphers. Nay it is not so 
much as that : for we are yet to learn by what arts or 
instruments the mind could he so measured and gauged. 25 

Mr. Lockhart, we are happy to say, has avoided both 
these errors. He uniformly treats Burns as the high 
and remarkable man the public voice has now pronounced 
him to be : and in delineadmr him, he has avoided the 
method of separate generalities, and rather sought for 30 
characteristic incidents, habits, actions, sayings; in a 
word, for aspects which exhibit the whole man, as he 
looked and lived among his fellows. The book accord- 
ingly, with all its deficiencies, gives more insight, we 



4 BURNS. 

think, into the true character of Burns, than any prior 
biography : though, being written on the very popular 
and condensed scheme of an article for Constable's Mis- 
cellany^ it has less depth than we could have wished and 
5 expected from a writer of such power ; and contains 
rather more, and more multifarious quotations than 
belong of right to an original production. Indeed, 
Mr. Lockhart's own writing is generally so good, so clear, 
direct and nervous, that we seldom wish to see it making 

lo place for another man's. However, the spirit of the work 
is throughout candid, tolerant and anxiously conciliat- 
ing ; compliments and praises are liberally distributed, 
on all hands, to great and small ; and, as Mr. Morris 
Birkbeck observes of the society in the backwoods of 

15 America, 'the courtesies of polite life are never lost sight 
of for a moment.' But there are better things than these 
in the volume ; and we can safely testify, not only that it 
is easily and pleasantly read a first time, but may even be 

"f without difficulty read again. 

20 Nevertheless, we are far from thinking that the prob- 
lem of Burns's Biography has yet been adequately solved. 
We do not allude so much to deficiency of facts or doc- 
uments, — though of these we are still every day re- 
ceiving some fresh accession, — as to the limited and 

25 imperfect application of them to the great end of Biog- 
raphy. Our notions upon this subject may perhaps 
appear extravagant ; but if an individual is really of 
consequence enough to have his life and character re- 
corded for public remembrance, we have always been 

30 of opinion that the public ought to be made acquainted 
with all the inward springs and relations of his charac- 
ter. How did the world and man's life, from his par- 
ticular position, represent themselves to his mind ? How 
did coexisting circumstances modify him from without j 



BURNS. 5 

how did he modify these from within ? With what en- 
deavours and what efficacy rule over them ; with 
what resistance and what suffering sink under them ? 
In one word, what and how produced was the effect of 
society on him ; what and how produced was his effect 5 
on society ? He who should answer these questions, in 
regard to any individual, would, as we believe, furnish a 
model of perfection in Biography. Few individuals, in- 
deed, can deserve such a study ; and many lives will be 
written, and, for the gratification of innocent curiosity, 10 
ought to be written, and read and forgotten, which are/ 
not in this sense biographies. But Burns, if we mistalce 
not, is one of these few individuals ; and such a study, 
at least with such a result, he has not yet obtained. 
Our own contributions to it, we are aware, can be but 15 
scanty and feeble-; but we offer them with good-will, 
and trust they may meet with acceptance from those they 
are intended for. .^r^^hi f »Ax^^ 

I Burns first came upon the world as a prodigy ; and 20 
was, in that character, entertained by it, in the usual 
fashion, with loud, vague, tumultufliis^ wonder, speedily 
subsiding into censure and neglect ; till his early and 
most mournful death again awakened an enthusiasm for 
him, which, especially as there was now nothing to be 25 
done, and much to be spoken, has prolonged itself even 
to our own time. It is true, the ' nine days ' have long 
since elapsed ; and the very continuance of this clamour 
proves that Burns was no vulgar wonder. Accordingly, 
even in sober judgments, where, as years passed by, he 30 
has comedo rest more and more exclusively on his own 
^ jptrm^ic m erits, and may now be well-nigh shorn of that 
casual radiance, he appears not only as a true British 
poet, but as one of the most considerable. British men of 



6 BURNS. 

the eighteenth century. Let it not be objected that he 
did little. He did much, if we consider where and how. 
If the work performed was small, we must remember 
that he had his very materials to discover ; for the metal 
5 he worked in lay hid under the desert moor, where no eye 
but his had guessed its existence ; and we may almost 
say, that with his own hand he had to construct the tools 
for fashioning it. For he found himself in deepest ob- 
scurity, without help, without instruction, without model ; 
10 or with models only of the meanest sort. An edu- 
cated man stands, as it were, in the midst of a boundless 
arsenal and magazine, filled with all the weapons and 
engines which man's skill has been able to devise from 
the earliest time ; and he works, accordingly, with a 
15 strength borrowed from all past ages. How different is 
his state who stands on the outside of that storehouse, 
and feels that its gates must be stormed, or remain for- 
ever shut against him ! His means are the commonest 
and rudest ; the mere work done is no measure of his 
20 strength. A dwarf behind his steam-engine may remove 
mountains; but no dwarf will hew them down with a 
pickaxe; and he must be a Titan that hurls them abroad 
^' with his arms. 

' ' It is in this last shape that Burns presents himself. 
25 Born in an age the most prosaic Britain had yet seen, 
and in a condition the most disadvantageous, where his 
mind, if it accomplished aught, must accomplish it under 
the pressure of continual bodily toil, nay of penury and 
desponding apprehension of the worst evils, and with no 
30 furtherance but such knowledge as dwells in a poor 
man's hut, and the rhymes of a Ferguson or Ramsay for 
his standard of beauty, he sinks not under all these irn^ 
)ediments: through the fogs and darkness of that obscure 
region, Tis lynx eye discerns the true relations of the 



BURNS. 7 

world and human life ; he grows into intellectual 
strength, and trains himself into intellectual expert- 
ness. Impelled by the expansive movement of his own 
irrepressible soul, he struggles forward into the general 
view ; and with haughty modesty lays down before us, as 5 
the fruit of his labour, a gift, which Time has now pro- 
nounced imperishable. Add to all this, that his dark- 
some drudging childhood and youth was by far the 
kindliest era of his whole life; and that he died in his 
thirty-seventh year: and then ask, If it be strange that 10 
his poems are imperfect, and of small extent, or that his 
genius attained no mastery in its art? Alas, his Sun 
shone as through a tropical tornado; and the pale Shadow 
of Death eclipsed it at noon! Shrouded in such baleful 
vapours, the genius of Burns was never seen in clear azure 15 
splendour, enlightening the world: but some beams from 
it did, by fits, pierce through; and it tinted those clouds 
with rainbow and orient colours, into a glory and stern 
grandeur, which men silently gazed on with wonder and 
tears ! 20 

I / We are anxious not to exaggerate ; for it is exposi- 
tion rather than admiration that our readers require of 
us here ; and yet to avoid some tendency to that side 
is no easy matter. We love Burns, and we pity him ; and 
love and pity are prone to magnify. Criticism, it is 25 
sometimes thought, should be a cold business ; we are 
not so sure of this ; but, at all events, our concern with 
Burns is not exclusively that of critics. True and genial 
as his poetry must appear, it is not chiefly as a poet, 
but as a man, that he interests and affects us. He was 30 
often advised to write a tragedy : time and means were 
not lent him for this ; but through life he enacted a 
tragedy, and one of the deepest. We question whether 
the world has since witnessed so utterly sad a scene ; 



8 BURNS. 

whether Napoleon himself, left to brawl with Sir Hud- 
son Lowe, and perish on his rock, ' amid the melan- 
choly main,' presented to the reflecting mind such a 
' spectacle of pity and fear ' as did this jj jtritmjrp^mi. 
5 nobler, gentler and perhaps greater soul, wasting itself 
away in a hopeless struggle with base entanglements 
which coiled closer and closer round him, till only 
death opened him an outlet. Conquerors are a class 
of men with whom, for most part, the world could well 

10 dispense ; nor can the hard intellect, the unsympathis- 
ing loftiness and high but selfish enthusiasm of such 
persons inspire us in general with any affection; at best 
it may excite amazement; and their fall, like that of a 
pyramid, will be beheld with a certain sadness and awe. 

15 But a true Poet, a man in whose heart resides some efflu- 
ence of Wisdom, some tone of the ' Eternal Melodies,' 
is the most precious gift that can be bestowed on a 
generation: we see in him a freer, purer development 
of whatever is noblest in ourselves ; his life is a rich 

20 lesson to us; and we mourn his death as that of a bene- 
factor who loved and taught us. 

gift had Nature, in her bounty, bestowed on 
us in Robert Burns ; but with queenlike indifference she 
cast it from her hand, like a thing of no moment; and 

25 it was defaced and torn asunder, as an idle Jjauhle^ 
before we recognised it. To the ill-starred Burns was 
given the power of making man's life more venerable, 
but that of wisely guiding his own life was not given. 
Destiny, — for so in our ignorance we must speak, — his 

30 faults, the faults of others, proved too hard for him; and 
that spirit, which might have soared could it but have 
walked, soon sank to the dust, its glorious faculties 
trodden under foot in the blossom; and died, we may 
almost say, without ever having lived. And so kind and 




BURNS. 9 

warm a soul; so full of inborn riches, of love to all liv- 
ing and lifeless things ! How his heart flows out in 
sympathy over universal Nature ; and in her bleakest 
provinces discerns a beauty and a meaning ! The 
'Daisy' falls not unheeded under his ploughshare : nor 5 
the ruined nest of that ' wee, cowering, timorous beastie,' 
cast forth, after all its provident pains, to ' thole ^ the 
sleety dribble and cranreuch^ cauld.' The 'hoar visage' 
of Winter delights him; he dwells with a sad and oft- 
returning fondness in these scenes of solemn desolation; 10 
but the voice of the tempest becomes an anthem to his 
ears ; he loves to walk in the sounding woods, for ' it 
raises his thoughts to Him that walketh on the wings of 
the ivind.^ A true Poet-soul, for it needs but to be 
struck, and the sound it yields will be music ! But ob- 15 
serve him chiefly as he mingles with his brother men. 
What warm, all-comprehending fellow-feeling; what trust- 
ful, boundless love; what generous exaggeration of the 
object loved! His rustic friend, his nut-brown maiden, 
are no longer mean and homely, but a hero and a queen, 20 
whom he prizes as the parages of Earth. The rough 
scenes of Scottish life, not seen by him in any Arcadian 
illusion, but in the rude contradiction, in the smoke 
and soil of a too harsh reality, are still lovely to him: 
Poverty is indeed his companion, but Love also, and 25 
Courage; the simple feelings, the worth, the nobleness, 
that dwell under the straw roof, are dear and venerable 
to his heart : and thus over the lowest provinces of 
man's existence he pours the glory of his own soul; 
and they rise, in shadow and sunshine, softened and 30 
brightened into a beauty which other eyes discern not in 
the highest. He has a just self-consciousness, which too 
often degCiy^gj^l^s into pride; yet it is a noble pride, for 

1 Endure. 2 Hoarfrost. 



10 BURNS. 

defence, not for offence ; no cold suspicious feeling, but 
a frank and social one. The Peasant Poet bears him- 
self, we might say, like a King in exile : he is cast among 
the low, and feels himself equal to the highest ; yet he 
5 claims no rank, that none may be disputed to him. The 
forward he can repel, the supercilious he can subdue ; 
pretensions of wealth or ancestry are of no avail with 
him; there is a fire in that dark eye, under which the 
' insolence of condescension ' cannot thrive. In his 

10 abasement, in his extreme need, he forgets not for a 
moment the majesty of Poetry and Manhood. And yet, 
far as he feels himself above common men, he wanders 
not apart from them, but mixes warmly in their interests; 
nay throws himself into their arms, and, as it were, 

15 entreats them to love him. It is moving to see how, in 
his darkest despondency, this proud being still seeks 
relief from friendship ; unbosoms himself often to the 
unworthy ; and, amid tears, strains to his glowing heart a 
heart that knows only the name of friendship. And yet 

20 he was ' quick to learn ' ; a man of keen vision, before 
whom common disguises afforded no concealment. His 
understanding saw through the hollowness even of accom- 
plished deceivers; but there was a generous credulity in 
his heart. And so did our Peasant show himself among 

25 us; 'a soul like an yEolian harp, in whose strings the 
vulgar wind, as it passed through them, changed itself into 
articulate melody.' And this was he for whom the world 
found no fitter business than quarrelling with smugglers 
and vintners, computing excise-dues upon tallow, and 

30 gauging ale barrels ! In such toils was that mighty 
Spirit sorrowfully wasted: and a hundred years may pass 
on before another such is given us to waste. 

All that remains of Burns, the Writings he has left, 



BUJ^NS. 11 

seem to us, as we hinted above, no more than a poor 
mutilated fraction of what was in him ; brief, broken 
glimpses of a genius that could never show itself com- 
plete; that wanted all things for completeness : culture, 
leisure, true effort, nay even length of life. His poems 5 
are, with scarcely any exception, mere occasional effu- 
sions ; poured forth with little premeditation ; expressing, 
by such means as offered, the passion, opinion, or humour 
of the hour. Never in one instance was it permitted him 
to grapple with any subject with the full collection of his 10 
strength, to fuse and mould it in the concentrated fire of 
his genius. To try by the strict rules of Art such imper- 
fect fragments, would be at once unprofitable and unfair. 
Nevertheless, there is something in these poems, marred 
and defective as they are, which forbids the most fas- 15 
tidious student of poetry to pass them by. Some sort of 
enduring quality they must have : for after fifty years of 
the wildest vicissitude s in poetic taste, they still continue 
to be read; nay, are read more and more eagerly, more 
and more extensively; and this not only by literary vir- 20 
tuosos, and that class upon whom transitory causes 
operate most strongly, but by all classes, down to the 
most hard, unlettered and truly natural class, who read 
little, and especially no poetry, except because they find 
pleasure in it. The grounds of so singular and wide a 25 
popularity, which extends, in a literal sense, from the 
palace to the hut, and over all regions where the English 
tongue is spoken, are well worth inquiring into. After 
every just deduction, it seems to imply some rare excel- 

^ lence in these works. What is that excellence ? 30 

. To answer this question will not lead us far. The 
excellence of Burns is, indeed, among the rarest, 
whether in poetry or prose; but, at the same time, it is 
plain and easily recognised : his Sincerity^ his indisput- 



'^ 



12 BURNS. 

able air of Truth. Here are no fabulous woes or joys ; 
no hollow fantast ic s entimentalities ; no wiredrawn refin- 
ings, either in thought or feeling: the passion that is 
traced before us has glowed in a living heart; the opin- 
5 ion he utters has risen in his own understanding, and 
been a light to his own steps. He does not write from 
hearsay, but from sight and experience; it is the scenes 
that he has lived and laboured amidst, that he describes: 
those scenes, rude and humble as they are, have kindled 

lo beautiful emotions in his soul, noble thoughts, and defi- 
nite resolves ; and he speaks forth what is in him, not 
from any outward call of vanity or interest, but because 
his heart is too full to be silent. He speaks it with such 
melody and modulation as he can; 'in homely rustic 

15 jingle; ' but it is his own, and genuine. This is the grand 
secret for finding readers and retaining them: let him 
who would move and convince others, be first moved and 
convinced himself. Horace's rule, Si vis me flere^ is 
applicable in a wider sense than the literal one. To every 

20 poet, to every writer, we might say: Be true, if you 
would be believed. Let a man but speak forth with 
genuine earnestness the thought, the emotion, the actual 
condition of his own heart; and other men, so strangely 
are we all knit together by the tie of sympathy, must and 

25 will give heed to him. In culture, in extent of view, we 
may stand above the speaker, or below him; but in 
either case, his words, if they are earnest and sincere, 
will find some response within us; for in spite of all 
casual varieties in outward rank or inward, as face 

30 answers to face, so does the heart of man to man. 

This may appear a very simple principle, and one 

which Ikirns had little merit in discovering. True, the 

discovery is easy enough: but the practical appliance is 

not easy; is indeed the fundamental difficulty which all 



BUHNS. 13 

poets have to strive with, and which scarcely one in they 
hundred ever fairly surmounts. A head too dull to dis7 
criminate the true from the false; a heart too dull to love 
the one at all risks, and to hate the other in spite of all 
temptations, arc alike fatal to a writer. With either, or as 5 
more commonly happens, with both of these deficiencies 
combine a love of distinction, a wish to be original, w^ich 
is seldom wanting, and we have Affect^j ^ ^ i^n. the ban^ of 
literature, as Cant, its elder brother, is of morals. How 
often does the one and the other front us, in poetry, as in 10 
life! Great poets themselves are not always free of this 
vice; nay, it is precisely on a certain sort and degree of 
greatness that it is most commonly ingrafted. A strong 
effort after excellence will sometimes solace itself with a 
mere shadow of success; he who has much to unfold, will 15 
sometimes unfold it imperfectly. Byron, for instance, 
was no common man: yet if we examine his poetry with 
this view, we shall find it far enough from faultless. 
Generally speaking, we should say that it is not true. 
He refreshes us, not with the divine fountain, but too 20 
often with vulgar strong waters, stimulating indeed to 
the taste, but soon ending in dislike, or even nausea. 
Are his Harolds and Giaours, we would ask, real men; 
we mean, poetically consistent and conceivable men .? Do 
not these characters, does not the character of their 25 
author, which more or less shines through them all, rather 
appear a thing put on for the occasion; no natural or 
possible mode of being, but something intended to look 
much grander than nature ? Surely, all these stormful 
agonies, this volcanic heroism, superhuman contempt and 30 
moody desperation, with so much scowling, and teeth- 
gnashing, and other sulphurous humour, is more like the 
brawling of a player in some paltry tragedy, which is to 
last three hours, than the bearing of a man in the busi- 



14 BURNS. 

ness of life, which is to last threescore and ten years. 
To our minds there is a taint of this sort, something which 
we should call theatrical, false, affected, in every one of 
these otherwise so powerful pieces. Perhaps Don Juan^ 
5 especially the latter parts of it, is the only thing approach- 
ing to a sincere work, he ever wrote ; the only work where 
he showed himself, in any measure, as he was; and 
seemed so intent on his subject as, for moments, to for- 
get himself. Yet Byron hated this vice; we believe, 

10 heartily detested it : nay he had declared formal war 
against it in words. So difficult is it even for the strong- 
est to make this primary attainment, which might seem 
the simplest of all: to 7'ead its own consciousness ivithout 
mistakes^ without errors involuntary or wilful ! We recol- 

15 lectno poet of Burns's susceptibil ^ who comes before us 
from the first, and abides with us to the last, with such a 
total want of affectation. He is an honest man, and an 
honest writer. In his successes and his failures, in his 
greatness and his littleness, he is ever clear, simple, true, 

20 and glitters with no lustre but his own. We reckon this 

to be a great virtue; to be, in fact, the root of most 

other virtues, literary as well as moral. ^^^^^t^ 

\p^ Here, however, let us say, it is to the Poetry or Burns 

\ M:hat we now ^p<j^- to those writings which he had time 

25 to meditate, and where no special reason existed to warp 
his critical feeling, or obstruct his endeavour to fulfil it. 
Certain of his Letters, and other fractions of prose com- 
position, by no means deserve this praise. Here, doubt- 
less, there is not the same natural truth of style; but, on 

30 the contrary, something not only stiff, but strained and 
twisted; a certain high-flown inflated tone; the stilting 
emphasis of which contrasts ill with the firmness and 
rugged simplicity of even his poorest verses. Thus no 
man, it would appear, is altogether unaffected. Does not 



f. 



BURNS. IS 

Shakspeare himself sometimes premeditate the sheerest 
bombast ! But even with regard to these Letters of Burns, 
it is but fair to state that he had two excuses. The first 
was his comparative deficiency in language. Burns, 
though for most part he writes with singular force and 5 
even gracefulness, is not master of English prose, as he 
is of Scottish verse; not master of it, we mean, in pro- 
portion to the depth and ^^fihytifiii^ of his matter. These 
Letters strike us as the effort of a man to express some- 
thing which he has no organ fit for expressing. But a sec- 10 
ond and weightier excuse is to be found in the peculiarity 
of Burns's social rank. His correspondents are oft^n 
men whose relation to him he has never accurately ^^iS^ 
^g^jj^ed ; whom therefore he is either forearming himself 
against, or else unconsciously flattering, by adopting the 15 
style he thinks will please them. At all events, we should 
remember that these faults, even in his Letters, are not 
the rule, but the exception. Whenever he writes, as one 
would ever wish to do, to trusted friends and on real 
interests, his style becomes simple, vigorous, expressive, 20 
sometimes even beautiful. His letters to Mrs. Dunlop 
are uniformly excellent. 

But we return to his Poetry. In addition to its Sin- 
cerity, it has another peculiar merit, which indeed is but 
a mode, or perhaps a means, of the foregoing : this 25 
displays itself in his choice of subjects; or rather in his 
indifference as to subjects, and the power he has of 
making all subjects interesting. The ordinary poet, like 
the ordinary man, is forever seeking in external circum- 
stances the help which can be found only in himself. In^3G 
what is familiar and near at hand, he discerns no form or 
comeliness : home is not poetical, but prosaic; it is in 
some past, distant, conventional heroic world that poetry 
resides. Were he there and not here, were he thus and 



16 BURNS. 

not so, it would be well with him. Hence our innumer- 
able host of rose-coloured Novels and iron-mailed Epics, 
with their locality not on the Earth, but somewhere 
nearer to the Moon. Hence our Virgins of the Sun, and 
5 our Knights of the Cross, malicious Saracens in turbans, 
and copper-coloured Chiefs in wampum, and so many other 
truculejjj figures from the heroic times or the heroic 
climates, who on all hands swarm in our poetry. Peace 
be with them ! But yet, as a great moralist proposed 

10 preaching to the men of this century, so would we fain 
preach to the poets, ' a sermon on the duty of staying at 
home.' Let them be sure that heroic ages and heroic 
climates can do little for them. That form of life has 
attraction for us, less because it is better or nobler than 

15 our own, than simply because it is different; and even 
this attraction must be of the most t^iyj^jjjgnt sort. For 
will not our own age, one day, be an ancient one ; and 
have as quaint a costume as the rest; not contrasted 
with the rest, therefore, but ranked along with them in 

20 respect of quaintness? Does Homer interest us now, 
because he wrote of what passed beyond his native 
Greece, and two centuries before he was born; or because 
he wrote what passed in God's world, and in the heart of %^ 
man, which is the same after thirty centuries ? Let our 

25 poets look to this : is their feeling really finer, truer, and 
their vision deeper than that of other men, — they have 
nothing to fear, even from the humblest subject ; is it 
not so, — they have nothing to hope, but an ephemeral 
favour, even from the highest. 

I^KT The poet, we imagine, can never have far to seek for a 

W ^subject : the elements of his art are in him, and around 
him on every hand; for him the Ideal world is not remote 
from the Actual, but under it and within it : nay, he is a 
poet, precisely because he can discern it there. Wher- 



BURNS. 17 

- ever there is a sky above him, and a world around him, 
the poet is in his place; for here too is man's existence, 
with its infinite longings and small acquirings; its ever- 
thwarted, ever-renewed endeavours ; its unspeakable 
aspirations, its fears and hopes that wander through 5 
Eternity ; and ail the mystery of brightness and of gloom 
that it was ever made of, in any age or climate, since 
man first began to live. Is there not the fifth act of a 
Tragedy in every death-bed, though it were a peasant's, 
and a bed of heath ? And are wooings and weddings 10 
^bsolete, that there can be Comedy no longer ! Or are 
men suddenly grown wise, that Laughter must no longer 
shake his sides, but be cheated of his Farce ? Man's life^ 
and nature is, as it was, and as it will ever be. But the 
poet must have an eye to read these things, and a heart 15 
to understand them; or they come and pass away before 
him in vain. He is a uates , a seer; a gift of vision has 
been given him. Has life no meanings for him, which 
another cannot equally decipher ; then he is no poet, 
and Delphi itself will not make him one. 20^ 

Ma In this respect. Burns, though not perhaps absolutely 
^, great poet, better manifests his capability, better proves 
the truth of his genius, than if he had by his own strength 
kept the whole Minerva Press going to the end of his 
literary course. He shows himself at least a poet of 25 
Nature's own making; and Nature, after all, is still the 
grand agent in making poets. We often hear of this and 
the other external condition being requisite for the exist- 
ence of a poet. Sometimes it is a certain sort of training ; 
he must have studied certain things, studied for instance 30 
' the elder dramatists,' and so learned a poetic language ; 
as if poetry lay in the tongue, not in the heart. At other 
times we are told he must be bred in a certain rank, and 
must be on a confidential footing with the higher classes ; 



18 BURA'S. 

because, above all things, he must see the world. As to 
seeing the world, we apprehend this will cause him little 
difficulty, if he have but eyesight to see it with. Without 
eyesight, indeed, the task might be hard. The blind or 
the purblind man ' travels from Dan to Beersheba, and 
finds it all barren.' But happily every poet is born i?i the 
world ; and sees it, with or against his will, every day and 
every hour he lives. The mysterious workmanship of 
man's heart, the true light and the inscrutable darkness 



10 of man's destiny, reveal themselves not only in capital 
cities and crowded saloons, but in every hut and hamlet 
where men have their abode. Nay, do not the elements 
Lman virt ues^ a nd all human vices; the passions 
at once of a>^orgia) and of a Luther, lie written, in 

15 stronger or fainter lines, in the consciousness of every 
individual bosom, that has practised honest self-examina- 
tion .? Truly, this same world may be seen in Mg]i'^[?'^<^l 
and Tarbolto n, if we look well, as clearly as it ever came 
to light in Crockford's or the 'Jjj^J^y^ itself. 

Pf But sometimes still harder requisitions are laid on the 
poor ^spirant to poetry; for it is hinted that he should 
have been born two centuries ago; inasmuch as poetry, 
about that date, vanished from the earth, and became no 
longer attainable by men ! Such cobweb speculations 

25 have, now and then, overhung the field of literature; but 
they obstruct not the growth of any plant there: the 
Shakspeare or the Burns, unconsciously and merely as he 
walks onward, silently brushes them away. Is not every 
genius an impossibility till he appear ? Why do we call 

30 him new and original, if we saw where his marble was 
lying, and what fabric he could rear from it ? It is not 
the material but the workman that is wanting. It is not 
the dark place that hinders, but the dim eye. A Scottish 
peasant's life was the meanest and rudest of all lives, till 



BURNS. 19 

Burns became a poet in it, and a poet of it; found it a 
man's life, and therefore ^nifi(|:a nt to men. A thousand 
battle-fields remain unsung; but the Woufided Hare has not 
perished without its memorial ; a balm of mercy yet breathes 
on us from its dumb agonies, because a poet was there. 5 
Our HalIo7vce7i had passed and repassed, in rude awe and 
laughter, since the era of the Druids; but no Theocritus, 
till Burns, discerned in it the materials of a Scottish Idyl: 
neither was the Holy Fair any Council of Trent or Roman 
Jubilee ; but nevertheless, Superstition and Hypocrisy and 10 
Fun having been propitious to him, in this man's hand it 
became a poem, instinct with satire and genuine comic life. 
Let but the true poet be given us, we repeat it, place him 
where and how you will, and true poetry will not be wanting. 

Independently of the essential gift of poetic feeling, as 15 
we have now attempted to describe it, a certain rugged 
sterling worth pervades whatever Burns has written ; a 
virtue, as of green fields and mountain breezes, dwells in 
his poetry ; it is redolg^t of natural life and hardy natural 
men. There is a decisive strength in him, and yet a 20 
sweet native gracefulness : he is tender, he is vehement, 
yet without constraint or too visible effort ; he melts the 
heart, or inflames it, with a power which seems habitual 
and familiar to him. We see that in this man there was 
the gentleness, the trembling pity of a woman, with the 25 
deep earnestness, the force and passionate ^j^lmjr of a 
hero. Tears lie in him, and consuming fire; as light- 
ning lurks in the drops of the summer cloud. He has a 



o nanc e in his bosom for every note of human feeling ; 

and the low, the sad, the ludicrous, the joyful, 30 



resonance 

the hign ana tne low, tne sad, tne ludicro^ 
are welcome in their turns to his ' lightly-moved and all- 
conceiving spirit.' And observe with what a fierce 
prompt force he grasps his subject, be it what it may ! 
How he fixes, as it were, the full image of the matter in 



20 BUKNS. 

his eye; full and clear in every Ijnc anien t; and catches the 
real type and essence of it, amid a thousand accidents and 
Lu pcrlicia l circumstances, no one of which misleads himl 
Is it of reason; some truth to be discovered? No sophistry, 
5 no vain surface-logic detains him; quick, resolute, unerring, 
he pierces through into the marrow of the question ; and 
speaks his verdict with an emphasis that cannot be forgotten. 
Is it of description ; some visual object to be represented? 
No poet of any age or nation is more graphic than IJurns: 

lo the characteristic features disclose themselves to him at a 
glance ; three lines from his hand, and we have a likeness. 
And, in that rough dialect, in that rutle, often awkward 
metre, so clear and definite a likeness! It seems a 
draughtsman working with a burnt stick; and yet the 

15 burin of a Ij^'t/s ch is not more expressive or exact. 
Of this last excellence, the plainest and most compre- 
hensive of all, being indeed the root and foundation of 
every sort of talent, poetical or intellectual, we could pro- 
duce innumerable instances from the writings of lUnns. 

20 Take these glimpses of a snow-storm from his IVintc'/- 
A'ight (the italics are ours) : 

When biting iH-treas, fell and (lourc,^ 
S/iar/> s/iivi'rs thro' the leafless bowV, 
And riuvbus t^^ics a s/tort-lii'\/ i^lowr 
t% Far south the lift:^ 

Dim-dark' nini!^ thro' the flaky show*r 
Or whirling drift : 

*Ae night the storm the steeples rock'd, 
Poor labour sweet in sleep was loek'cl, 
30 While burns luV snauy lureeths upchok'd 

Wild-eddying swhirl^ 
Or thro' the mining outlet bock'd ^ 
Down headlong hurl. 

^ Keen and stubborn. *Sky. 'Gushed. 



BURNS. 21 

Are there not * descriptive touches ' here ? The de- 
scriber saiv this thin<; ; the essential feature and true 
likeness of every circumstance in it; saw, and not with 
the eye only. ' Poor labour locked in sweet sleep ; ' the 
dead stiUness of man, unconscious, vanquished, yet not 5 
unprotected, while such strife of the material elements 
rages, and seems to reign supreme in loneliness : this is 
of the heart as well as of the eye 1 — Look also at his 
image of a thaw, and prophesied fall of the Auhi Brig: 

When heavy, dark, continued, a'-day rains lo 

Wi' deepening deluges o'erflow the plains ; 

When from the hills where springs the brawling Coil, f| 

Or stately Lugar's tnossy fountains boil, 

Or where the Greenock winds his moorland course, 

Or haunted Carpal^ draws his feeble source, i^ 

Arous'd by blust'ring winds and spotting thowes,* 

In fnony a torrent down his snaw-broo rowes ; * 

While crashing ice, borne on the roaring speat,^ 

Sweeps dams and mills and brigs ^ a* to the gate; 

And from (ilenbuck down to the Rottenkey, 20 

Auld Ayr is just one lengthen'd tumbling sea ; 

Then down ye'Il hurl, Deil nor ye never rise ! 

And dash the gumlie Jaups^ up to the pouring skies. 

The last line is in itself a Poussin-picture of that Deluge ! 
The welkin |ias, as it were, bent down with its weight; 25 
the 'gumlie jaups ' and the 'pouring skies' are mingled 
together ; it is a world of rain and ruin. In respect of 
mere clearness and minute fidelity, the Farmer's com- 
mendation of his Auld Marc, in plough or in cart, may 
vie with Homer's Smithy of the Cyclops, or yoking 30 
of Priam's Chariot. Nor have we forgotten stout Burn- 

^ Fabtilosus Hydaspes I C. ^ Thaws. * Melted snow rolls. 

* A flood after heavy rain, or thaw. 

^ Bridges. * Splashes of muddy water. 



Sk 



22 BURNS. 

the-wind^ and his brawny customers, inspired by Scotch 
Drink: but it is. needless to multiply examples. One 
other trait of a much finer sort we select from multitudes 
of such among his Songs. It gives, in a single line, to 
5 the saddest feeling the saddest environment and local 
habitation : 

The pale Moon is setting beyond the white u>ave^ 
And Time is setting wf ine^ O ; 
Farewell, false friends ! false lover, farewell ! 
10 I '11 nae mair trouble thcni nor thee, O. 

This clearness of sight we have called the foundation 
of all talent ; for in fact, unless we sec our object, how 
shall we know how to place or prize it, in our under- 
standing, our imagination, our affections? Yet it is not 

IS in itself, perhaps, a very high excellence ; but capable of 
being united indifferently with the strongest, or with 
ordinary power. Homer surpasses all men in this 
quality : but strangely enough, at no great distance 
below him are Richardson and Defoe. It belongs, in 

20 truth, to what is called a lively mind; and gives no sure 
indication of the higher endowments that may exist along 
with it. In all the three cases we have mentioned, it is 
combined with great garrulity ; their descriptions are 
detailed, ample and lovmgf^^xact ; Homer's fire bursts 

25 through, from time to time, as if by accident ; but Defoe 
and Richardson have no fire. Burns, again, is not more 
distinguished by the clearness than by the i mjH!tyoi|s 
force of his conceptions . Of the strength, the piercing 
emphasis with which lie thought, his emphasis of expres- 

30 sion may give a humble but the readiest proof. Who 
ever uttered sharper sayings than his ; words more mem- 

* A blacksmith. 



u 



BURNS. 23 

orable, now by their burning vehemence, now by their 
cool vigour and ti^liiiiif^ pitl^ ? A single phrase depicts 
a whole subject, a whole scene. We hear of *a gentle- 
man that derived his patent of nobility direct from 
Almighty God.' Our Scottish forefathers in the battle- 5 
field struggled forward '' red-wat-shod^ : in this one word, 
a full vision of horror and ^arn age, perhaps too fright- 
fully accurate for Art ! 

I n fac t, one of the leading feat ures in the mind ^ of 
Jjurns is" this vigour of his strictly ji-it^^llf^^tnnl pf^i^pp- iq 
■ tinns,^ A resolute force is ever visible in his judgments, 
and in his feelings and volitions. Professor Stewart 
says of him, with some surprise: ^ A ll_ the facul ties of ■■■ 
Burns's mind were, as far as J rnnid jm^jye^ pgnnlly 
vigorous; and his predilect ion for poetry was rather the 15 
result oT his own enthusiastic and impassioned temper, 
than of a genius exclusively adapted to that species of 
composition. From his conversation I should have pro- 
nounced him to be fitted to excel in whatever walk of 
ambition he had chosen to exert his abilities.' But this, 20 
if we mistake not, is at all times the very essence of a 
truly poetical endowment. Poetry, except in such cases 
as that of Keats, where the whole consists in a weak- 
eyed maudlin sensibility, and a certain vague random 
tuncfuTnes^of nature, is no separate faculty, no organ 25 
which can be superadded to the rest, or disjoined from 
them ; but rather the result of their general harmony and 
completion. The feelings, the gifts that exist in the Poet 
are those that exist, with more or less development, in 
every human soul : the imagination, which shudders at 30 
the Hell of Dante, is the same faculty, weaker in 
degree, which called that picture into being. How does 
the Poet speak to men, with power, but by being still 
more a man than they ? Shakspeare, it has been well 



24 



^ BURNS. / 



observed, in the planning and completing of his trage- 
dies, has shown an Understanding^.were it nothing more, 
which might have governed states, or indited a Noinim 
Orga?iiwi. What Burns's force of understanding may 
5 have been, we have less means of judging : it had to 
dwell among the humblest objects ; never saw Philoso- 
phy ; never rose, except by natural effort and for short 
intervals, into the region of great ideas. Nevertheless, 
sufficient indication, if no proof sufficient, remains for 

10 us in his works : we discern the brawny movements of a 
gigantic though untutored strength ; and can understand 
how, in conversation, his quick sure insight into men and 
things may, as much as aught else about him, have 
amazed the best thinkers of his time and country. 
7^^ But, unless we mistake, the intellectual gift of Burns 
■' ^^ is fine as well as strong. The more delicate relations of 
things could not well have escaped his eye, for they were 
intimately present to his heart. The logic of the senate 
and the forum is indispensable, but not all-sufficient ; 

20 nay perhaps the highest Truth is that which will the 
most certainly elude it. For this logic works by words, 
and ' the highest,' it has been said, ' cannot be expressed 
in words.' We are not without tokens of an openness for 
this higher truth also, of a keen though uncul^vated 

25 sense for it, having existed in Burns. Mr. Stewart, it 
will be remembered, ' wonders,' in the passage above 
quoted, that Burns had formed some distinct conception 
of the ' doctrine of association.' We rather think that far 
subtler things than the doctrine of association had from 
* '30 of old been familiar to him. Here, for instance : 

•' We know nothing,' thus writes he, 'or next to nothing, of 
the structure of our souls, so we cannot account for those seem- 
ing cannces in them, that one should be particularly pleased 
with this thing, or struck with that, which, on minds of a 



BURNS. 25 

different cast, makes no extraordinary impression. I have 
some favourite flowers in spring, among which are the moun- 
tain-daisy, the harebell, the foxglove, the wild brier rose, the 
budding birch, and the hoary hawthorn, that I view and hang 
over with particular delight. I never hear the loud solitary S 
whistle of the curlew in a summer noon, or the wild mixing 
cadence of a troop of gray plover in an autumnal morning, 
without feeling an elevation of soul like the enthusiasm of 
devotion or poetry. Tell me, my dear friend, to what can this 
be owing? Are we a piece of machinery, which, like the lo 
iColian harp, passive, takes the impression of the passing acci- 
dent; or do these workings argue something within us above 
the trodden clod } I own myself partial to such proofs of 
those awful and important realities: a God that made all 
things, man's immaterial and immortal nature, and a world of 15 
weal or wo beyond death and the grave.' 



li 



Force and fineness of understanding 'are often spoken 
of as something different from general force and fineness 
of nature, as something partly independent of them. The 
necessities of language so require it ; but in truth these 20 
qualities are not distinct and independent ; except in 
special cases, and from special causes, they ever go to- 
gether. A man of strong understanding is generally a 
man of strong character; neither is delicacy in the one 
kind often divided from delicacy in the other. No one, 25 
at all events, is ignorant that in the Poetry of Burns 
keenness of insight keeps pace with keenness of feeling; 
that his light is not more pervading than his wa7-mth. 



tnai 
mtl^^,J^_^ man of the most im passioned temper ; with 



)rt in 



which ^reat virtues and great poems take their ris e. It 
isj-ever ence^ ^^^ ^'g inyg ly wards all Nature that inspir es 
him, that opens his eyes to its beauty, and makes hear t 
^and voice eloquent jn its f>rai;^(j^. There is a true old 



% 



26 BURNS. 

saying, that ' Love furthers knowledge : ' but, above all, it 
is the living essence of that knowledge which makes 
poets ; the first principle of its existence, increase, ac- 
tivity. Of Burns's f^rnirl affection, his generous all-em- 
5 bracing Love, we have spoken already, as of the grand 
distinction of his nature, seen equally in word and deed, 
in his Life and in his Writings. It were easy to multiply 
examples. Not man only, but all that environs man in 
the material and moral universe, is lovely in his sight : 

lo * the hoary hawthorn,' the '■ troop of gray plover,' the 
* solitary curlew,' all are dear to him; all live in this 
Earth along with him, and to all he is knit as in mysteri- 
ous brotherhood. How touching is it, for instance, that, 
amidst the gloom of personal misery, brooding over the 

15 wintry desolation without him and within him, he thinks 
of the * ourie ^ cattle ' and ' silly sheep,' and their suffer- 
ings in the pitiless storm I 

I thought me on the ourie cattle. 
Or silly sheep, wha bide this brattle 
20 O' wintry war, 

Or thro' the drift, deep-lairing, ^ sprattle, ^ 

Beneath a scaur. ^ 
Ilk^ happing bird, wee helpless thing, 
That in the merry months o' spring 
25 Delighted me to hear thee sing. 

What comes o' thee ? 
Where wilt thou cow'r thy chittering^ wing. 

And close thy ee } 



§ 



The tenant of the mean hut, with its ' ragged roof and 
chinky wall,' has a heart to pity even these 1 This is 

1 Shivering. ' ■* Cliff. 

2 Wading. 6 Each. 
' Struggle. Trembling with cold. 



^f 



BURNS. 27 

worth several homilies on Mercy, for it is the voice of 
Mercy herself. Burns, indeed, lives in sympathy; his 
soul rushes forth into all realms of being; nothing that 
has existence can be indifferent to him. The very Devil 
he cannot hate with right orthodoxy: S 

But fare you weel, auld Nickie-ben; 
O, wad ye tak a thought and men' ! 
Ye aiblins ^ might, — I dinna ken, — 

Still hae a stake ; 
I'm wae to think upo' yon den, lo 

Even for your sake ! 



'•'■He is the father of curses and lies," said Dr. Slop ; 
" and is cursed and damned already." '' I am sorry for 
it," quoth my uncle Toby ! — a Poet without Love were 
a physical and metaphysical impossibility. 15 

But has it not been said, in contradiction to this prin- 
ciple, that ' Tndip-nation makes verses'.? It has been so 
said, and is true enough : but the contradiction is 
apparent, not real. The Indignation which makes 
verses is, properly speaking, an inverted Love ; the love 20 
of some right, some worth, some goodness, belonging to 
ourselves or others, which has been injured, and which 
this tempestuous feeling issues forth to defend and 
avenge. No selfish fury of heart, existing there as a 
primary feeling, and without its opposite, ever produced 25 
much Poetry : otherwise, we suppose, the Tiger were the 
most musical of all our chorister s. Johnson said, he 
loved a good hater ; by which he must have meant, not 
so much one that hated violently, as one that hated 
wisely ; hated baseness from love of nobleness. How- 30 
ever, in spite of Johnson's paradox , tolerable enough for 
once in speech, but which need not have been so often 

1 Perhaps. 



5 tl 

as: 



28 . BURNS. 

adopted in print since then, we rather beHeve that good 
men deaj sparingly in hatred, either wise or unwise : nay 
that a * good hater ' is still a desid eratu m in this world. 
The Devil, at least, who passes for the chief and best of 
5 tjiat class, is said to be nowise an amiable character. 

Of the verses which Indignation makes. Burns has also 
given us specimens : and among the best that were ever 
given. Who will forget his ^Dweller i?i yon Dungeon 
dark; ' a piece that might have been chanted by the 
10 \Furies of ^schylus^ The secrets of the infernal Pit are 
laid bare ; a boundless baleful ' darkness visible ; ' and 
streaks of hell-fire quivering madly in its black haggard 
bosom 1 

Dweller in yon Dungeon dark, 
'5 Hangman of Creation, mark ! 

Who in widow's weeds appears, 
Laden with unhonoured years. 
Noosing with care a bursting purse, 
Baited with many a deadly curse ! 



t\ 



Why should we speak of Scots wha hae wV Wallace bled ; 
since all know of it, from the king to the meanest of his 
subjects ? This dithyrambic was composed on horse- 
back ; in riding in the middle of tempests, over the 
wildest Galloway moor, in company with a Mr. Syme, 

25 who, observing the poet's looks, forbore to speak, — 
judiciously enough, for a man composing Bruce' s Address 
might be unsafe to trifle with. Doubtless this stern 
hymn was singing itself, as he formed it, through the 
soul of Burns : but to the external ear, it should be sung 

30 with the throat of the whirlwind. So long as there is 
warm blood in the heart of Scotchman or man, it will 
move in fierce thrills under this war-ode ; the best, we 
believe, that was ever written by any pen. 



f mil 



BURNS. 29 

Another wild stormful Song, that dwells in our ear and 
mind with a strange tenacity, is J ^acphcrsotC s Farewell . 
Perhap^ there is something in the tradition itself that co- 
operates. For was not this grim Celt, this shaggy North- 
land Cacus , that * lived a life of sturt and strife, and died 5 
by treacherie,' — was not he too one of the Nim ry ds and 
Napoleons of the earth, in the arena of his own remote 
misty glens, for want of a clearer and wider one ? Nay, 
was there not a touch of grace given him ? A fibre of 
love and softness, of poetry itself, must have lived in his 10 
savage heart : for he composed that air the night before 
his execution ; on the wings of that poor melody his bet- ^ 
ter soul would soar away above oblivion , pain and all the 
ignominy and despair, which, like an avalanche, was hurl- 
ing him to the abyss ! Here also, as at Thebes, and in 15 
Pelops' line, was material Fate matched against man's 
Free-will ; matched in bitterest though obscure duel ; 
and the ethereal soul sank not, even in its blindness, with- 
out a cry which has survived it. But who, except Burns, 
could have given words to such a soul .; words that we 20 
never listen to without a strange half-barbarous, half- 
poetic fellow-feeling ? 



Sac rantingly, ^ sae wantonly^ 



t 



\ 



Sae dauntingly gaed he ; 
lie play''d a springs and danced it roun 

Below the i^al lows-tree. ^^ /i ^ , 



Under a lighter disguise, the same principle of Love, 
which we have recognised as the great characteristic of 
Burns, and of all true poets, occasionally manifests itself 
in the shape of Humour. Everywhere, indeed, in his 30 
sunny moods, a full buoyant flood of mirth rolls through 
the mind of Burns ; he rises to the high, and stoops to 

1 Gleefully. 



^f 



30 BUJ^NS. 

the low, and is brother and playmate to all Nature. We 
speak not of his bold and often irresistible faculty of car- 
icature ; for this is Drollery rather than Humour : but a 
much tenderer sportfulness dwells in him ; and comes 

5 forth here and there, in evanescent and beautiful touches ; 
as in his Address to the Mouse, or the Farmer s Mare, or 
in Xvi'S, Elegy on poor Ma Hie, which last may be reckoned 
his happiest elTort of this kind. In these pieces there 
are traits of a Humour as fine as that of Sterne ; yet 

10 altogether different, original, peculiar, — the Humour of 
Ikirns. 

Of the tenderness, the playful pathos, and many other 
kindred (lualities of Ikirns's Poetry, much more might be 
said ; but now, with these poor outlines of a sketch, we 

15 must prepare to quit this part of our subject. To speak 
of his individual Writings, adequately and with any de- 
tail, would lead us far beyond our limits. As already 
hinted, we can look on but few of these pieces as, in 
strict critical language, deserving the name of Poems : 

20 they are rhymed eloquence, rhymed pathos, rhymed sense ; 
yet seldom essentially melodious, aerial, poetical. 2\un 
d'Shanter itself, which enjoys so high a favour, does not 
appear to us at all decisively to come under this last cat- 
egory. It is not so much a poem, as a piece of spark- 

25 ling rhetoric ; the heart and body of the story still lies 
hard and dead. He has not gone back, much less car- 
ried us back, into tliat dark, earnest, wondering age, when 
the tradition was believed, and when it took its rise ; he 
does not attempt, by any new-modeling of his supernat- 

30 ural ware, to strike anew that deep mysterious chord of 
human nature, which once responded to such things ; 
and which lives in us too, and will forever live, though 
silent now, or vibrating with far other notes, and to far 
different issues. Our German readers will understand us. 



i< 



BURNS. 31 

when we say, that he is not the Tieck but the Musaiis of 
this tale. Externally it is all green and living ; yet look 
closer, it is no firm growth, but only ivy on a rock. The 
piece does not properly cohere : the strange chasm which 
yawns in our incredulous imaginations between the Ayr s 
public-house and the gate of Tophet, is nowhere bridged 
over, nay the idea of such a bridge is laughed at ; and 
thus the Tragedy of the adventure becomes a mere 
drunken phantasmagoria, or many-coloured spectrum 
painted on ale-vapours, and the Farce alone has any lo 
reality. We do not say that JJurns should have made 
much more of this tradition ; we rather think that, for 
strictly poetical purposes, not much was to be made of it. 
Neither are we blind to the deep, varied, genial power 
displayed in what he has actually accomplished ; but we ^5 
iinil far more ' Shakspearean ' qualities, as these of 7am 
o' Shanter h2L\iQ, been fondly named, in many of his other 
pieces ; nay we incline to believe that this latter might 
have been written, all but quite as well, by a man who, 
in place of genius, had only possessed talent. 20 

Perhaps we may venture to say, that the most strictly 
poetical of all his ' poems ' is one which does not appear 
in Currie's Edition ; but has been often printed before 
and since, under the humble title of The Jolly Beggars. 
The subject truly is among the lowest in Nature ; but it 25 
only the more sliows our l^oet's gift in raising it into the 
domain of Art. To our minds, this piece seems thor- 
oughly compacted ; melted together, refined; and poured 
forth in one flood of true liquid harmony. It is light, 
airy, soft of movement ; yet sharp and precise in its 3^ 
details ; every face is a portrait : that rauele earlier, that 
wee Apollo, that Son of Mars, are Scottish, yet ideal; the 
scene is at once a dream, and the very Ragcastle of 
*Poosie-Nansie.' Farther, it seems in a considerable 



32 BURNS. 

degree complete, a real self-supporting Whole, which is 
the highest merit in a poem. The blanket of the Night 
is drawn asunder for a moment ; in full, ruddy, tlaming 
light, these rough tatterdemalions are seen in their bois- 

S terous revel ; for the strong pulse of Life vindicates its 
right to gladness even here ; and when the curtain closes, 
we prolong the action, without effort ; the next day as 
the last, our Caird and our Ba/ladfno?iger are singing and 
soldiering ; their ' brats ^ and callets ' ^ are hawking, beg- 

10 ging, cheating ; and some other night, in new combinations, 
they will wring from Fate another hour of wassail and 
good cheer. Apart from the universal sympathy with 
man which this again bespeaks in Burns, a genuine in- 
spiration and no inconsiderable technical talent are man- 

15 ifested here. There is the fidelity, humour, warm life 
and accurate painting and grouping of some Teniers, for 
whom hostlers and carousing peasants are not without 
significance. It would be strange, doubtless, to call this 
the best of Burns's writings: we mean to say only, that 

20 it seems to us the most perfect of its kind, as a piece of 
poetical composition, strictly so called. In the Beggars^\ 
Opera, in the Beggars^ Bush, as other critics have already V^ 
remarked, there is nothing which, in real poetic vigour, 
equals this Caiitata ; nothing, as we think, which comes 

25 within many degrees of it. 



^\ 



Ikit by far the most finished, complete and truly in- 
spired pieces of Burns are, without dispute, to be found 
/among his Songs. It is here that, although through a 
small aperture, his light shines with least obstruction ; in 
30 its highest beauty and pure sunny clearness. The reason 
may be, that Song is a brief simple species of composi- 
tion ; and requires nothing so much for its perfection as 
1 Rae^s. 2 Wenches. 



BURNS. 33 

genuine poetic feeling, genuine music of heart. Yet the 
Song has its rules equally with the Tragedy; rules which 
in most cases are poorly fulfilled, in many cases are not 
so much as felt. We might write a long essay on the 
Songs of Burns ; which we reckon by far the best that ' 5 
Britain has yet produced : for indeed, since the era of 
Queen Elizabeth, we know not that, by any other hand, 
aught truly worth attention has been accomplished in this 
department. True, we have songs enough ' by persons 
of quality'; we have tawdry, hollow, wine-bred madrigals; 10 
many a rhymed speech ' in the flowing and watery vein 
of Ossorius the Portugal Bishop,' rich in sonorous words, 
and, for moral, dashed perhaps with some tint of a senti- 
mental sensuality; all which many persons cease not 
from endeavouring to sing; though for most part, we 15 
fear, the music is but from the throat outwards, or at best 
from some region far enough short of the Soul; not in 
which, but in a certain inane Limbo of the Fancy, or even 
in some vaporous debateable-land on the outskirts of the 
Nervous System, most of such madrigals and rhymed 20 

-speeches seem to have originated. • 

I i^ \V"ith the Songs T)f Burns we must not name these 
J iWhings. Independently of the clear, manly, heartfelt senti- 
ment that ever pervades his poetry, his Songs are honest 
■ in another point of view : in form, as well as in spirit. 25 
They do not a^ect to be set to music, but they actually 
and in themselves are music ; they have received their 
life, and fashioned themselves together, in the medium of 
Harmony, as Venus rose from the bosom of the sea. 
The story, the feeling, is not detailed, but suggested ; not 3° 
said, or spouted, in rhetorical completeness and co- 
herence ; but sung, in fitful gushes, in glowing hints, in 
fantastic breaks, in warblings not of the voice only, but 
of the whole mind. We consider this to be the essence 



34 BURNS. 

of a song ; and that no songs since the little careless 
catches, and as it were drops of song, which Shakspeare 
has here and there sprinkled over his Plays, fulfil this 
condition in nearly the same degree as most of Burns's 
5 do. Such grace and truth of external movement, too, 
presupposes in general a corresponding force and truth 
of sentiment and inward meaning. The Songs of Burns 
are not more perfect in the former quality than in the 
latter. With what tenderness he sings, yet with what 

lo vehemence and entireness ! There is a piercing wail in 
his sorrow, the purest rapture in his joy ; he burns with 
the sternest ire, or laughs with the loudest or sliest 
mirth ; and yet he is sweet and soft, ' sweet as the smile 
when fond lovers meet, and soft as their parting tear.' 

15 If we farther take into account the immense variety of 
his subjects ; how, from the loud flowing revel in Willie 
brew' (I a Peck 0^ Maut, to the still, rapt enthusiasm of sad- 
ness for Mary in Heaven ; from the glad kind greeting of 
Auld Langsyne, or the comic archness of Duncan Gray, 

20 to the fire-eyed fury of Scots wha hae wV Wallace bled, 
he has found a tone and words for every mood of man's 
heart, — it will seem a small praise if we rank him as the 
first of all our Song-writers ; for we know not where to 
find one worthy of being second to him. 

25 It is on his songs, as we believe, that Burns's chief 
influence as an author will ultimately be found to de- 
pend : nor, if our Fletcher's aphorism is true, shall we 
account this a small influence. ' Let me make the songs 
of a people,' said he, ' and you shall make its laws.' 

30 Surely, if ever any Poet might have equalled himself with 
Legislators on this ground, it was Burns. His Songs are 
already part of the mother-tongue, not of Scotland only 
but of Britain, and of the millions that in all ends of the 
earth speak a British language. In hut and hall, as the 



BURNS. 35 

heart unfolds itself in many-coloured joy and woe of 
existence, the name^ the voice of that joy and that woe, is 
the name and voice which Burns has given them. 
Strictly speaking, perhaps no British man has so deeply 
affected the thoughts and feelings of so many men, as 5 
this solitary and altogether private individual, with means 
apparently the humblest. »^'^^-^-^^ ^/ 

fj In another point of view, moreover, we incline to think 
' A that Burns's influence may have been considerable : we 
mean, as exerted specially on the Literature of his coun- 10 
try, at least on the Literature of Scotland. Among the 
great changes which British, particularly Scottish litera- 
ture, has undergone since that period, one of the greatest 
will be found to consist in its remarkable increase of 
nationality. Even the English writers, most popular in 15 
Burns's time, were little distinguished for their literary 
patriotism, in this its best sense. A certain jj^tnnnfitr.d 
cosmopolitanism had, in good measure, taken place of the 
old insular home-feeling ; literature was, as it were, with- 
out any local environment ; was not nourished by the 20 
affections which spring from a native soil. Our Grays 
and Glovers seemed to write almost as. if iii vacuo ; the 
thing written bears no mark of place ; it is not written so 
much for Englishmen, as for men ; or rather, which is 
the inevitable result of this, for certain Geperg lisations 25 
which philosophy termed men. Goldsmith is an excep- 
tion : not so Johnson ; the scene of his Rambler is little 
more English than that of his Rasselas. 

\ But if such was, in some degree, the case with England, 
it was, in the highest degree, the case with Scotland. In 3° 
fact, our Scottish literature had, at that period, a very 
singular aspect ; unexampled, so far as we know, except 
perhaps at Geneva, where the same state of matters ap- 
pears still to continue. For a long period after Scotland 



36 BURNS. 

became British, we had no literature : at the date when 
Addison and Steele were writing their Spectators, our good 
John Boston was writing, with the noblest intent, but 
alike in defiance of grammar and philosophy, his Four- 
5 fold State of Man. Then came the schisms in our 
National Church, and the fiercer schisms in our Body 
Politic : Theologic ink, and Jacobite blood, with gall 
enough in both cases, seemed to have blotted out the 
intellect of the country : however, it was only obscured, 

io not obliterated. Lord Karnes made nearly the first 
attempt at writing English ; and ere long, Hume, Robert- 
son, Smith, and a whole host of followers, attracted hither 
the eyes of all Europe. And yet in this brilliant resus- 
citation of our 'fervid genius,' there was nothing truly 

15 Scottish, nothing indigenous ; except, perhaps, the natural 
impetuosity of intellect, which we sometimes claim, and 
are sometimes upbraided with, as a characteristic of our 
nation. I t is c urious to rpmarl^ tV>af <gp^t]f|p^j q/^ f^ij^^^ 
writers, had no Scottish culture, nor indeed any English ; 

20 our culture was almost exclusively French. It was by 
studying Racine and Voltaire, Batteux and Boileau, that 
Kames had trained himself to be a critic and philosopher ; 
it was the light of Montesquieu and Mably that guided 
Robertson in his political speculations ; Quesnay's lamp 

25 that kindled the lamp of Adam Smith. Hume was too 
rich a man to borrow ; and perhaps he reacted on the 
French more than he was acted on by .them : but neither 
had he aught to do with Scotland ; Edinburgh, equally 
with La Fl^che, was but the lodging and laboratory, in 

30 which he not so much morally lived, as metaphysically 
investigated. Never, perhaps, was there a class of writers 
so clear and well-ordered, yet so totally destitute, to all . 
appearance, of any patriotic affection, nay of any human 
affection whatever. The French wits of the period were 



BURNS. 37 

as unpatriotic : but their general deficiency in moral prin- 
ciple, not to say their avowed sensuality and unbelief in 
all virtue, strictly so called, render this accountable 
enough. We hope, there is a patriotism founded on 
something better than prejudice ; that our country may 5 
be dear to us, without injury to our philosophy ; that in 
loving and justly prizing all other lands, we may prize 
justly, and yet love before all others, our own stern 
Motherland, and the venerable Structure of social and 
moral Life, which Mind has through long ages been 10 
building up for us there. Surely there is nourishment *or 
the better part of man's heart in all this : surely the roots, 
that have fixed themselves in the very core of man's 
being, may be so cultivated as to grow up not into briers, 
but into roses, in the field of his life ! Our Scottish sages 15 
have no such propensities : the field of their life shows 
neither briers nor roses ; but only a flat, continuous 
thrashing-floor for Logic, whereon all questions, from the 
' Doctrine of Rent ' to the ' Natural History of Religion,' 
are thrashed and sifted with the same mechanical im- 20 
partiality ! 
■^ With Sir Walter Scott at the head of our literature, it 
^^^annot be denied that much of this evil is past, or rapidly 
passing away : our chief literary men, whatever other 
faults they may have, no longer live among us like a 25 
French Colony, or some knot of Propaganda Mission- 
aries ; but like natural-born subjects of the soil, partak- 
ing and sympathising in all our attachments, humours^ 
and habits. Our literature no longer grows in water but 
in mould, and with the true racy virtues of the soil and 30 
climate. How much of this change may be due to Burns, 
or to any other individual, it might be difiicult to estimate. 
Direct literary imitation of Burns was not to be looked 
for. But his example, in the fearless adoption of domes- 



38 BURNS. 

tic subjects, could not but operate from afar ; and cer- 
tainly in no heart did the love of country ever burn with 
a warmer glow than in that of Burns: ' a tide of Scottish 
prejudice,' as he modestly calls this deep and generous 
5 feeling, ' had been poured along his veins ; and he felt 
that it would boil there till the fiood-gates shut in eter- 
nal rest.' It seemed to him, as if /l e could ^o so little 
for his country, and yet wouia so gladly have done alh 



One smAll pluvillCi! iiluOd- Upt^ii lor mm, — that of Scot- 
10 tish Song ; and how eagerly he entered on it, how de- 
votedly he laboured there ! In his toilsome journeyings, 
this object never quits him ; it is the little happy-valley 
of his careworn heart. In the gloom of his own afflic- 
tion, he eagerly searches after some lonely brother of the 
15 muse, and rejoices to snatch one other name from the 
oblivion that was covering it ! These were early feelings, 
and they abode with him to the end : 

... A wish (I mind its power), 
A wish, that to my latest hour 
20 Will strongly heave my breast, — 

That I, for poor auld Scotland's sake, ^^ 

Some useful plan or book could make, -^V 

Or sing a sang at least. 

The rough bur Thistle spreading wide 
25 Amang the bearded bear, 

I turn'd my weeding-clips aside, 
^^ And spared the symbol dear. 

P^ I But to leave the mere literary character of Burns. 

^ which has already detained us too long. Far more inter- 

30 esting than any of his written works, as it appears to us, 

are his acted ones : the Life he willed and was fated to 

lead among his fellow-men. These Poems are but like 

little rhymed fragments scattered here and there in the 



BURNS. 39 

grand unrhymed Romance of his earthly existence ; and 
it is only when intercalated in this at their proper places, 
that they attain their full measure of significance. And 
this, too, alas, was but a fragment ! The plan of a 
mighty edifice had been sketched ; some columns, por- 5 
ticos, firm masses of building, stand completed ; the rest 
more or less clearly indicated ; with many a far-stretching 
tendency, which only studious and friendly eyes can now 
trace towards the purposed termination. For the work 
is broken off in the middle, '^almost in the beginning ; 10 
and rises among us, beautiful and sad, at once unfinished 
and a ruin ! If charitable judgment was necessary in 
estimating his Poems, and justice required that the aim. 
and the manifest power to fulfil it must often be accepted 
for the fulfilment ; much more is" this the case in regard 15 
to his Life, the sum and result of all his endeavours, where 
his difficulties came upon him not in detail only, but in 
mass ; and so much has been left unaccomplished, nay 
was mistaken, and altogether marred. 

f*!Properly speaking, there is but one era in the life of 20 
urns, and that the earliest. We have not youth and 

• manhood, but only youth : for, to the end, we discern no 
decisive change in the complexion of his character ; in 
his thirty-seventh year, he is still, as it were, in youth. 

\ With all that resoluteness of judgment, that penetrating 25 
insight, and singular maturity of intellectual power, ex- 
hibited in his writings, he never attains to any clearness 
regarding himself ; to the last, he never ascertains his 
peculiar aim, >^ven with such distinctness as is common 
among ordinary men ; and therefore never can pursue it 3° 
with that i^ngleness of will, which insures success and 
some contentment to such men. To the last, he wavers 
between two purposes : glorying in his talent, like a true 
poet, he yet cannot consent to make this his chief and 



40 



BUKNS. 



sole priory, and to follow it as the one thing needful, 
thiou-h poverty or riches, throu<,rh good or evil report! 
Another far meaner ambition still cleaves to him ; he 
nuisl dream and struggle about a certain 'Rock of I'nde- 
spendence;' which, natural and even admirable as it 
might be, was still but a warring with the world, on (he 
comparatively insignificant ground of his being more 
completely or less completely sui^plied with money than 
others ; of his standing at a higlier or at a lower altitude 
10 in general estimation than others. J-or the world still 
appears to him, as lo die young, in borrowed colours: he 
expects from it what it cannot give to any man ; seeks 
for contentment, ivot within himself, in action and wise 
effort, but from witliout, in the kindness of circumstances, 
15111 love, friendship, honour, pecuniary ease. He would 
be happy, not actively and in himself, but passively and 
from some ideal cornucopia of Enjoyments, not earned by 
his own labour, but showered on him by the beneficence 
of Destiny, 'i juis^ like a youno- uvm), he cani xjij^rd 
-° OiLU-s^'lf "P jorany vv()rtiiy -wt-ll^eulated goal, but 



IS 



>«\ver 




h a 



re- 
eep 



^ 



morseful disapi^ointmrH ^ t : rushing 

tempestuous force, he surmounts or breaks asunder many 
a barrier ; travels, nay advances far, but advancing only 
5 under uncertain guidance, is ever and anon turned from 
his path ; and to the last cannot reach the only true hap- 
piness of a man, that of clear decided Activity in the 
sphere for which, by nature and circumstances, heiUis 
been littcd and appointed. 

We do not say tiiese tilings in dispraise of Hums; nay, 

pcriiaixs, they but interest us the more in his favour. 

riiis blessing is not given soonest to the best ; but rather, 

it is often the greatest minds that are latest in obtaining 

it ; for where most is to be developed, most time may be 




}iURIVS. 41 

required to develop it. A complex condition had been 
assigned hini from without ; ;is complex a condition from 
witiiin : no 'preestablished harmony' existed between the 
clay soil of Mossgiel and the emi)yrean soul of Rol)ert 
Burns ; it was not wonderful that the adjustment between 5 
them should have been long postponed, and his arm long 
cumbered, and his sight confused, in so vast and discord- 
ant an economy as he had been appointed steward over. 
JJyron was, at his death, but a year younger than Jkirns ; 
and through life, as it might have appeared, far more 10 
simply situated : yet in him too we can trace no such 
adjustment, no such moral manhood; but at best, and 
only a little before his end, the beginning of what seemed 
^such. 

/ j By much the most striking incident in lUirns's Life is 15 
^his journey to Edinburgh; but perhaps a still more 
important one is his residence at Irvine, so early as in 
his twenty-third year. Hitherto his life had been poor 
and toilworn ; but otherwise not ungenial, and, with 
all its distresses, by no means unhappy. In his parent- 20 
age, deducting outward circumstances, he had every 
reason to reckon himself fortunate. 1 1 is father was a 
man of thoughtful, intense, earnest character, as the 
best of our peasants are ; valuing knowledge, possessing 
some, and what is far better and rarer, openminded for 25 
more : a man with a keen insight and devout heart ; 
reverent towards (lod, friendly therefore at once, and 
fearless towards all that (lod has made: in one word, 
though but a hard-handed peasant, a complete and fully 
unfolded Man. Such a father is seldom found in any \o 
rank in society ; and was worth descending far in 
society to seek. Unfortunately, he was very poor ; had 
he been even a little richer, almost never so little, the 
whole might have issued far otherwise. Mighty events 



42 BUKNS. 

turn on a straw ; the crossing of a brook decides the con- 
quest of the world. Had this William Burns's small 
seven acres of nursery-ground anywise prospered, the boy 
Robert had been sent to school ; had struggled forward, 
5 as so many weaker men do, to some university ; come 
forth not as a rustic wonder, but as a regular well-trained 
intellectual workman, and changed the whole course of 
British Literature, — for it lay in him to have done this ! 
But the nursery did not prosper ; poverty sank his 

10 whole family below the help of even our cheap school- 
system : Burns remained a hard-worked ploughboy, and 
British literature took its own course. Nevertheless, 
even in this rugged scene there is much to nourish him. 
If he drudges, it is with his brother, and for his father 

15 and mother, whom he loves, and would fain shield from 
want. Wisdom is not banished from their poor hearth, 
nor the balm of natural feeling : the solemn words, Let 
us worship God, are heard there from a ' priest-like 
father' ; if threatenings or unjust men throw mother and 

20 children into tears, these are tears not of grief only, but 
of holiest affection ; every heart in that humble group 
feels itself the closer knit to every other ; in their hard 
warfare they are there together, a ' little band of breth- 
ren.' Neither are such tears, and the deep beauty that 

25 dwells in them, their only portion. Light visits the 
hearts as it does the eyes of all living : there is a force, 
too, in this youth, that enables him to trample on misfor- 
tune ; nay to bind it under his feet to make him sport. 
For a bold, warm, buoyant humour of character has been 

30 given him ; and so the thick-coming shapes of evil are 
welcomed with a gay, friendly irony, and in their closest 
pressure he bates no jot of heart or hope. Vague yearn- 
ings of ambition fail not, as he grows up ; dreamy fancies 
hang like cloud-cities around him ; the curtain of Exist- 



BURNS. 43 

ence is slowly rising, in many-coloured splendour and 
gloom : and the auroral light of first love is gilding his 
horizon, and the music of song is on his path ; and so he 
walks 

in glory and in joy, ^ 

Behind his plough, upon the mountain side. 

We ourselves know, from the best evidence, that up to 
this date Burns was happy ; nay that he was the gayest, 
brightest, most fantastic, fascinating being to be found 
in the world ; more so even than he ever afterwards lo 
appeared. But now, at this early age, he quits the pa- 
ternal roof ; goes forth into looser, louder, more exciting 
society ; and becomes initiated in those dissipations, 
those vices, which a certain class of philosophers have 
asserted to be a natural preparative for entering on active 15 
life ; a kind of mud-bath, in which the youth is, as it 
were, necessitated to steep, and, we suppose, cleanse 
himself, before the real toga of Manhood can be laid on 
him. We shall not dispute much with this class of phi- 
losophers ; we hope they are mistaken ; for Sin and Re- 20 
morse so easily beset us at all stages of life, and are 
always such indifferent company, that it seems bard we 
should, at any stage, be forced and fated not only to 
meet but to yield to them, and even serve for a term in 
their leprous armada. We hope it is not so. Clear we 25 
are, at all events, it cannot be the training one receives 
in this Devil's service, but only our determining to desert 
from it, that fits us for true manly Action. We become 
men, not after we have been dissipated, and disappointed 
in the chase of false pleasure ; but after we have ascer- 30 
tained, in any way, what impassable barriers hem us in 
through this life ; how mad it is to hope for content- 
ment to our infinite soul from the gifts of this extremely 



44 BURNS. 

finite world ; that a man must be sufficient for himself •, 
and that for suffering and enduring there is no remedy 
but striving and doing. Manhood begins when we have 
in any way made truce with Necessity ; begins even 
5 when we have surrendered to Necessity, as the most part 
only do ; but begins joyfully and hopefully only when 
we have reconciled ourselves to Necessity ; and thus, in 
reality, triumphed over it, and felt that in Necessity we 
are free. Surely, such lessons as this last, which, in one 

10 shape or other, is the grand lesson for every mortal man, 
are better learned from the lips of a devout mother, in 
the looks and actions of a devout father, while the heart 
is yet soft and pliant, than in collision with the sharp 
adamant of Fate, attracting us to shipwreck us, when the 

15 heart is grown hard, and may be broken before it will 
become contrite. Had Burns continued to learn this, as 
he was already learning it, in his father's cottage, he 
would have learned it fully, which he never did ; and 
been saved many a lasting aberration, many a bitter hour 

20 and year of remorseful sorrow. 

It seems to us another circumstance of fatal import in 
urns's history, that at this time too he became involved 
in the religious quarrels of his district ; that he was 
enlisted and feasted, as the fighting man of the New- 

25 Light Priesthood, in their highly unprofitable warfare. 
At the tables of these free-minded clergy he learned much 
more than was needful for him. Such liberal ridicule of 
fanaticism awakened in his mind scruples about Religion 
itself ; and a whole world of Doubts, which it required 

30 quite another set of conjurors than these men to exor- 
cise. We do not say that such an intellect as his could 
have escaped similar doubts at some period of his 
history ; or even that he could, at a later period, have 
come through them altogether victorious and unharmed : 



A\ 



BURNS. 45 

but it seems peculiarly unfortunate that this time, above 
all others, should have been fixed for the encounter. 
For now, with principles assailed by evil example from 
without, by ' passions raging like demons' from within, he 
had little need of sceptical misgivings to whisper treason 5 
in the heat of the battle, or to cut off his retreat if he 
were already defeated. He loses his feeling of inno- 
cence ; his mind is at variance with itself ; the old divinity 
no longer presides there ; but wild Desires and wild 
Repentance alternately oppress him. Ere long, too, he 10 
has committed himself before the world ; his character 
for sobriety, dear to a Scottish peasant as few corrupted 
worldlings can even conceive, is destroyed in the eyes of 
men ; and his only refuge consists in trying to disbelieve 
his guiltiness, and is but a refuge of lies. The blackest 15 
desperation now gathers over him, broken only by red 
lightnings of remorse. The whole fabric of his life is 
blasted asunder ; for now not only his character, but his 
personal liberty, is to be lost ; men and Fortune are 
leagued for his hurt ; * hungry Ruin has him in the wind.' 20 
He sees no escape but the saddest of all : exile from his 
loved country, to a country in every sense inhospitable 
and abhorrent to him. While the * gloomy night is 
gathering fast,' in mental storm and solitude, as well as 
in physical, he sings his wild farewell to Scotland: 25 

Farewell, my friends ; farewell, my foes ! 
My peace with these, my love with those : 
The bursting tears my heart declare ; 
Adieu, my native banks of Ayr ! 



!^ 



\^ Light breaks suddenly in on him in floods ; but still a 30 
^ false transitory light, and no real sunshine. He is in- 
vited to Edinburgh ; hastens thither with anticipating 
heart ; is welcomed as in a triumph, and with universal 



46 I BURNS. 

blandishment and acclamation ; whatever is wisest, what- 
ever is greatest or loveliest there, gathers round him, to 
.gaze on his face, to show him honour, sympathy, affection. 
Burns's appearance among the sages and nobles of 

5 Edinburgh must be regarded as one of the most singular 
phenomena in modern Literature ; almost like the 
appearance of some Napoleon among the crowned sover- 
eigns of modern Politics. For it is nowise as ' a mockery 
king,' set there by favour, transiently and for a pur- 

10 pose, that he will let himself be treated ; still less is 
he a mad Rienzi, whose sudden elevation turns his too 
weak head : but he stands there on his own basis ; cool, 
unastonished, holding his equal rank from Nature herself ; 
putting forth no claim which there is not strength i?i him, 

15 as well as about him, to vindicate. Mr. Lockhart has 
some forcible observations on this point : 

* It needs no effort of imagination,' says he, * to conceive 
what the sensations of an isolated set of scholars (almost all 
either clergymen or professors) must have been in the presence 

20 of this big-boned, black-browed, brawny stranger, with his 
great flashing eyes, who, having forced his way among them 
from the plough-tail at a single stride, manifested in the whole 
strain of his bearing and conversation a most thorough con- 
viction, that in the society of the most eminent men of his 

25 nation he was exactly where he was entitled to be ; hardly 
deigned to flatter them by exhibiting even an occasional symp- 
tom of being flattered by their notice ; by turns calmly 
measured himself against the most cultivated understandings 
of his time in discussion ; overpowered the bon tnots of the 

30 most celebrated convivialists by broad floods of merriment, 
impregnated with all the burning life of genius ; astounde 
bosoms habitually enveloped in the thrice-piled folds of socia 
reserve, by compelling them to tremble, — nay, to tremble 
visibly, — beneath the fearless touch of natural pathos ; and 

35 all this without indicating the smallest willingness to be ranked 






BURNS. 47 

among those professional ministers of excitement, who are 
content to be paid in money and smiles for doing what the 
spectators and auditors would be ashamed of doing in their 
own persons, even if they had the power of doing it ; and last, 
and probably worst of all, who was known to be in the habit S 
of enlivening societies which they would have scorned to ap- 
proach, still more frequently than their own, with eloquence 
no less magnificent ; with wit, in all likelihood still more 
daring ; often enough, as the superiors whom he fronted with- 
out alarm might have guessed from the beginning, and had ere lo 
long no occasion to guess, with wit pointed at themselves.' 



t 



The farther we remove from this scene, the more 
ingular will it seem to us : details of the exterior aspect 
of it are already full of interest. Most readers recollect 
Mr. Walker's personal interviews with Burns as among 15 
the best passages of his Narrative : a time will come when 
this reminiscence of Sir Walter Scott's, slight though it 
is, will also be precious : 

♦As for Burns,' writes Sir Walter, 'I may truly say, 
Virgilium vidi taiitum. I was a lad of fifteen in 1786-7, 20 
when he came first to Edinburgh, but had sense and feeling 
enough to be much interested in his poetry, and would have 
given the world to know him : but I had very little acquaint- 
ance with any literary people, and still less with the gentry of 
the west country, the two sets that he most frequented. Mr. 25 
Thomas Grierson was at that time a clerk of my father's. He 
knew Burns, and promised to ask him to his lodgings to din- 
ner ; but had no opportunity to keep his word ; otherwise I 
might have seen more of this distinguished man. As it was, 
I saw him one day at the late venerable Professor Ferguson's, 30 
where there were several gentlemen of literary reputation, 
among whom I remember the celebrated Mr. Dugald Stewart. 
Of course, we youngsters sat silent, looked and listened. The 
only thing I remember which was remarkable in Burns's 
manner, was the effect produced upon him by a prirlt of 35 



48 BURNS. 

Bunbury's, representing a soldier lying dead on the snow, his 
dog sitting in misery on one side, — on the other, his widow, 
with a child in her arms. These lines were written beneath : 

" Cold on Canadian hills, or Minden's plain, 
c Perhaps that mother wept her soldier slain ; 

Bent o'er her babe, her eye dissolved in dew, 
The big drops mingling with the milk he drew, 
Gave the sad pressage of his future years, 
The child of misery baptised in tears." 

10 ' Burns seemed much affected by the print, or rather by the 
ideas which it suggested to his mind. He actually shed tears. 
He asked whose the lines were ; and it chanced that nobody^ 
but myself remembered that they occur in a half-forgotten ^ 
poem of Langhorne's called by the unpromising title of " The - 

15 Justice of Peace." I whispered my information to a friend 
present ; he mentioned it to Burns, who rewarded me with 
a look and a word, which, though of mere civility, I then re- 
ceived and still recollect with very great pleasure. 

' His person was strong and robust ; his manners rustic, 

20 not clownish ; a sort of dignified plainness and simplicity, 
which received part of its effect perhaps from one's knowledge 
of his extraordinary talents. His features are represented in 
Mr. Nasmyth's picture : but to me it conveys the idea that 
they are diminished, as if seen in perspective. I think his 

25 countenance was more massive than it looks in any of the 
portraits. I should have taken the poet, had I not known what 
he was, for a very sagacious country farmer of the old Scotch 
school, i.e. none of your modern agriculturists who keep 
labourers for their drudgery, but the douce ^ gude>nan who held 

30 his own plough. There was a strong expression of sense and 
shrewdness in all his lineaments ; the eye alone, I think, in- 
dicated the poetical character and temperament. It was 
large, and of a dark cast, which glowed (I say literally ^/^^w^^T) 
when he spoke with feeling or interest. I never saw such 

35 another eye in a human head, though I have seen the most 

1 Sedate. 



BURNS. 49 

distinguished men of my time. His conversation expressed 
perfect self-confidence, without the slightest presumption. 
Among the men who were the most learned of their time and 
country, he expressed himself with perfect firmness, but with- 
out the least intrusive forwardness ; and when he differed in 5 
opinion, he did not hesitate to express it firmly, yet at the same 
time with modesty. I do not remember any part of his con- 
versation distinctly enough to be quoted ; nor did I ever see 
him again, except in the street, where he did not recognise me, 
as I could not expect he should. He was much caressed in 10 
Edinburgh : but (considering what literary emoluments have 
been since his day) the efforts made for his relief were ex- 
tremely trifling. 

' I remember, on this occasion I mention, I thought Burns's 
acquaintance with English poetry was rather limited ; and also 15 
that, having twenty times the abilities of Allan Ramsay and of 
Ferguson, he talked of them with too much humility as his 
models : there was doubtless national predilection in his esti- 
mate. 

' This is all I can tell you about Burns. I have only to add, 20 
that his dress corresponded with his manner. He was hke a 
farmer dressed in his best td dine with the laird. I do not 
speak in mala7n partem^ when I say, I never saw a man in 
company with his superiors in station or information more 
perfectly free from either the reality or the affectation of 25 
embarrassment. I was told, but did not observe it, that his 
address to females was extremely deferential, and always with 
a turn either to the pathetic or humorous, which engaged their 
attention particularly. I have heard the late Duchess of 
Gordon remark this. I do not know anything I can add to 30 
these recollections of forty years since.' 



14 

r^a\ 

I ■nr\\ 



The conduct of Burns under this dazzling blaze of 
avour ; the calm, unaffected, manly manner in which he 
not only bore it, but estimated its value, has justly been 
regarded as the best proof that could be given of his real 3? \ 
vigour and integrity of mind. A little natural vanity, ' 



%, 



50 BURNS. 

some touches of hypocritical modesty, some glimmerings 
of affectation, at least some fear of being thought affected, 
we could have pardoned in almost any man ; but no such 
indication is to be traced here. In his unexampled situ- 
5 ation the young peasant is not a moment perplexed ; so 
many strange lights do not confuse him, do not lead him 
astray. Nevertheless, we cannot but perceive that this 
winter did him great and lasting injury. A somewhat 
clearer knowledge of men's affairs, scarcely of their char- 

10 acters, it did afford him ; but a sharper feeling of 
Fortune's unequal arrangements in their social destiny it 
also left with him. He had seen the gay and gorgeous 
arena, in which the powerful are born to play their parts ; 
nay had himself stood in the midst of it ; and he felt more 

15 bitterly than ever, that here he was but a looker-on, and 
had no part or lot in that splendid game. From this time a 
jealous indignant fear of social degradation takes posses- 
sion of him ; and perverts, so far as aught could pervert, 
his private contentment, and his feelings towards his 

20 richer fellows. It was clear to Burns that he had talent 
enough to make a fortune, or a hundred fortunes, could 
he but have rightly willed this ; it was clear also that he 
willed something far different, and therefore could not 
make one. Unhappy it was that he had not power to 

25 choose the one, and reject the other ; but must halt for- 
ever between two opinions, two objects ; making ham- 
pered advancement towards either. But so is it with 
many men : we 'long for the merchandise, yet would fain 
keep the price ; ' and so stand chaffering with Fate, in 

30 vexatious altercation, till the night come, and our fair is A^ 
over ! 

The Edinburgh Learned of that period were in general 

more noted for clearness of head than for warmth of 

eart : with the exception of the good old Blacklock, 



BURNS. 51 

whose help was too ineffectual, scarcely one among them 
seems to have looked at Burns with any true sympathy, 
or indeed much otherwise than as at a highly curious thing. 
By the great also he is treated in the customary fashion ; 
entertained at their tables and dismissed : certain modica 5 
of pudding and praise are, from time to time, gladly ex- 
changed for the fascination of his presence ; which 
exchange once effected, the bargain is finished, and each 
party goes his several way. At the end of this strange 
season. Burns gloomily sums up his gains and losses, and 10 
meditates on the chaotic future. In money he is some- 
what richer ; in fame and the show of happiness, 
infinitely richer ; but in the substance of it, as poor as 
ever. Nay poorer ; for his heart is now maddened still 
more with the fever of worldly Ambition ; and through 15 
long years the disease will rack him with unprofitable 
sufferings, and weaken his strength for all true and 
nobler aims. •--C-^^-.--'''*— 't^— _ r^ 

>^ What Burns was next to do or to avoid ; how a man so ^ — 
' /circumstanced was now to guide himself towards his true 20 
I advantage, might at this point of time have been a ques- 
tion for the wisest. It was a question too, which appar- 
ently he was left altogether to answer for himself : of his 
learned or rich patrons it had not struck any individual 
to turn a thought on this so trivial matter. 'Without 25 
claiming for Burns the praise of perfect sagacity, we must 
say, that his Excise and Farm scheme does not seem to 
us a very unreasonable one ; that we should be at a loss, 
even now, to suggest one decidedly better. Certain of 
his admirers have felt scandalised at his ever resolving 30 
to gauge ; and would have had him lie at the pool, till the 
spirit of Patronage stirred the waters, that so, with one 
friendly plunge, all his sorrows might be healed. Un- 
wise counsellors 1 They know not the manner of this 



4: 



52 BURNS. 

spirit ; and how, in the lap of most golden dreams, a map 
might have happiness, were it not that in the interim he 
must die of hunger ! It reflects credit on the manliness 
and sound sense of Burns, that he felt so early on what 
5 ground he was standing ; and preferred self-help, on the 
humblest scale, to dependence and inaction, though with 
hope of far more splendid possibilities. But even these 
possibilities were not rejected in his scheme : he might 
expect, if it chanced that he luiil any friend, to rise, in no 

lo long period, into something even like opulence and 
leisure ; while again, if it chanced that he had no friend, he 
could still live in security ; and for the rest, he ' did not 
intend to borrow honour from any profession.' We reckon 
that his plan was honest and well calculated: all turned on 

15 the execution of it. Doubtless it failed; yet not, we be- 
lieve, from any vice inherent in itself. Nay, after all, it 
was no failure of external means, but of internal, that 
overtook Burns. His was no bankruptcy of the purse, but 
of the soul ; to his last day, he owed no man anything. 

20 Meanwhile he begins well : with two good and wise 
actions. His donation to his mother, munificent from a 
man whose income had lately been seven pounds a year, 
was worthy of him, and not more than worthy. Generous 
also, and worthy of him, was the treatment of the woman 

25 whose life's welfare now depended on his pleasure. A 
friendly observer might have hoped serene days for him : 
his mind is on the true road to peace with itself : what 
clearness he still wants will be given as he proceeds ; 
for the best teacher of duties, that still lie dim to us,, is 

30 the Practice of those we see and have at hand. Had the 
* patrons of genius,' who could give him nothing, but 
taken nothing from him, at least nothing more 1 The 
wounds of his heart would have healed, vulgar ambition 
would have died away. Toil and Frugality would have 



f 



BURNS. 53 

been welcome, since Virtue dwelt with them ; and Poetry 
would have shone through them as of old : and in her 
clear ethereal light, which was his own by birthright, he 
might have looked down on his earthly destiny, and all 
its obstructions, not with patience only, but with love. 5 

But the patrons of genius would not have it so. 
Picturesque tourists,^ all manner of fashionable danglers 
after literature, and, far worse, all manner of convivial 
Maecenases, hovered round him in his retreat ; and his 
good as well as his weak qualities secured them influence 10 
over him. Pie was flattered by their notice ; and his 
warm social nature made it impossible for him to shake 
them off, and hold on his. way apart from them. These 
men, as we believe, were proximately the means of his 
ruin. Not that they meant him any ill ; they only meant 15 
themselves a little good ; if he suffered harm, let hwi look 
to it ! But they wasted his precious time and his precious 
talent ; they disturbed his composure, broke down his 
returning habits of temperance and assiduous contented 
exertion. Their pampering was baneful to him ; their 20 

1 There is one little sketch by certain ' English gentlemen ' of 
this class, which, though adopted in Currie's Narrative, and since 
then repeated in most others, we have all along felt an invincible 
disposition to regard as imaginary : * On a rock that projected into 
the stream, they saw a man employed in angling, of a singular ap- 
pearance. He had a cap made of fox-skin on his head, a loose 
greatcoat fixed round him by a belt, from which depended an enor- 
mous Highland broad-sword. It was Burns.' Now, we rather 
think, it was not Burns. For, to say nothing of the fox-skin cap, 
the. loose and quite Hibernian watchcoat with the belt, what are we 
to make of this • enormous Highland broad-sword ' depending from 
him ? More especially, as there is no word of parish constables on 
the outlook to see whether, as Dennis phrases it, he had an eye to 
his own midriff or that of the public ! Burns, of all men, had the 
least need, and the least tendency, to seek for distinction, either in 
his own eyes, or those of others, by such poor mummeries. 



6D 



54 BURNS. 

cruelty, which soon followed, was equally baneful. The 
old grudge against Fortune's inequality awoke with new 
bitterness in their neighbourhood ; and Burns had no re- 
treat but to 'the Rock of Independence,' which is but an 
5 air-castle after all, that looks well at a distance, but will 
screen no one from real wind and wet. Flushed with 
irregular excitement, exasperated alternately by contempt 
of others, and contempt of himself, Burns was no longer 
regaining his peace of mind, but fast losing it forever. 

lo There was a hollowness at the heart of his life, for his 
conscience did not now approve what he was doing. 

Amid the vapours of unwise enjoyment, of bootless 
remorse, and angry discontent with Fate, his true load- 
star, a life of Poetry, with Poverty, nay with Famine if it 

15 must be so, was too often altogether hidden from his 
eyes. And yet he sailed a sea, where without some such 
loadstar there was no right steering. Meteors of French 
Politics rise before him, but these were not his stars. An 
accident this, which hastened, but did not originate, his 

20 worst distresses. In the mad contentions of that time, 
he comes in collision with certain official Superiors ; is 
wounded by them ; cruelly lacerated, we should say, 
could a dead mechanical implement, in any case, be 
called cruel: and shrinks, in, indignant pain, into deeper 

25 self-seclusion, into gloomier moodiness than ever. His 

life has now lost its unity : it is a life of fragments ; led 

with little aim, beyond the melancholy one of securing its 

• own continuance, — in fits of wild false joy when such 

offered, and of black despondency when they passed 

30 away. His character before the world begins to sutler : 
calumny is busy with him ; for a miserable man makes 
more enemies than friends. Some faults he has fallen 
into, and a thousand misfortunes ; but deep criminality 
is what he stands accused of, and they that are not with- 



BUA'NS. 55 

out sin cast the first stone at him ! For is he not a well- 
wisher to the French Revolution, a Jacobin, and there- 
fore in that one act guilty of all? These accusations, 
political and moral, it has since appeared, were false 
enough : but the world hesitated little to credit them. 5 
Nay his convivial Majcenases themselves were not the 
last to do it. There is reason to believe that, in his 
later years, the Dumfries Aristocracy had partly with- 
drawn themselves from Burns, as from a tainted person, 
no longer worthy of their acquaintance. That painful 10 
class, stationed, in all provincial cities, behind the out- 
most breastwork of Gentility, there to stand siege and do 
battle against the intrusions of Grocerdom and Grazier- 
dom, had actually seen dishonour in the society of Burns, 
and branded him with their veto; had, as we vulgarly 15 
say, cut him ! We find one passage in this Work of Mr. 
Lockhart's, which will not out of our thoughts : 

' A gentleman of that county, whose name I have already 
more than once had occasion to refer to, has often told me 
that he was seldom more grieved, than when riding into Dum- 20 
fries one fine summer evening about this time to attend a 
county ball, he saw Burns walking alone, on the shady side of 
the principal street of the town, while the opposite side was 
gay with successive groups of gentlemen and ladies, all drawn 
together for the festivities of the night, not one of whom 25 
appeared willing to recognise him. The horseman dismounted, 
and joined Burns, who on his proposing to cross the street 
said : " Nay, nay, my young friend, that 's all over now; " and 
quoted, after a pause, some verses of Lady Grizzel Baillie's 
pathetic ballad : 30 

" His bonnet stood ance fu' fair on his brow, 
His auld ane look'd better than mony ane's new; 
But now he lets 't wear ony way it will hing, 
And casts himsell dowie ^ upon the com-bing. 

* Worn-out. 



56 /n'AWS. 

O, were we young as wr aiice hae been, 

\Vc Slid liac l)«.'en galloping down on yon green, 

And linkiiiL; ' it owcr the lily-white lea I 

Ani/ wt-ri-Hu tny heart lights I wad die. ^^ 

5 It was little in nurns's character ti> let his feelings on certain 
subjects escape in this fashion, lie, immediately after recit- 
ing these verses, assumed the s})rii;htliness of his most pleasing 
manner; and taking his voting friend lu>me with him, enter- 
tained him very agreeably till the hour ol the ball arrivcLl.' 

lo Alas! when we think that lUirns now sleeps ' where 

^^ bitter indignation can no longer lacerate his heart,"" and 

^^ that most of those fair dames and frizzled gentlemen 

\J already lie at his side, where the breastwork of gentility 

is (jiiite tiirown down, — who would not sigh over the 

15 thin delusions and foolish toys that divide heart from 

heart, and make man unmerciful to his brother ! 

It was not now to be hoped that the genius of lUuns 
would ever reach maturity, or accomplish aught worthy 
^< ^ of itself, llis s[Mrit was jarred in its melody; not the 
"^ JO soft breath of natural feeling, but the rude hand of Fate, 
was now sweeping over tlie strings. And yet what har- 
mony was in him, what music even in his discords ! How 
the wild tones had a charm for the simplest and the 
wisest ; and all men felt ami knew that here also was one 
25 of the (lifted ! 'If he entered an inn at midnight, after 
all the inmates were in beil, the news of his arrival circu- 
lated from the cellar to the garret ; and ere ten minutes 
had elapseil. the lamllord and all his guests were assem- 
bled !' Some brief pure moments of poetic life were yet 
30 appointed him, in the compositicui of his Songs. We 
can understand how he grasped at this employment ; and 
how too. he spiuiu'd ;ill other reward for it but what the 

^ Trippini;. 

'^ Ubi Sitva indi^natio cor uiterius iacerart ne^luit. Swift's Epitaph. 



BURNS. 57 

lal)()ur itself brought him. Vov the soul of Burns, though 
scatlicd and marred, was yet living in its full moral 
strength, though sharply conscious of its errors and 
abasement : and here, in his destitution and degradation, 
was one act of seeming nobleness and self-devotedness 5 
left even for him to perform. He felt too, that with all 
the ' thoughtless follies' that had ' laid him low,' the world 
was unjust and cruel to him ; and he silently appealed 
to another and calmer time. Not as a hired soldier, 
but as a patriot, would he strive for the glory of his 10 
country : so he cast from him the poor sixpence a day, 
and served zealously as a volunteer. Let us not grudge 
him this last luxury of his existence ; let him not have 
appealed to us in vain ! The money was not necessary 
to him; he struggled through without it: long since, 15 
these guineas would have been gone, and now the high- 
mindedness of refusing them will plead for him in all 
hearts forever. 

We are here arrived at the crisis of Burns's life; for 
matters had now taken such a shape with him as could 20 
not long continue. If improvement was not to be looked 
for, Nature could only for a limited time maintain this 
dark and maddening warfare against the world and itself. 
We are not medically informed whether any continuance 
of years was, at this period, probable for Burns ; whether 25 
his death is to be looked on as in some sense an acciden- 
tal event, or only as the natural consequence of the long 
series of events that had preceded. The latter seems to 
be the likelier opinion ; and yet it is by no means a cer- 
tain one. At all events, as we have said, some change 30 
could not be very distant. Three gates of deliverance, 
it seems to us, were open for Burns : clear poetical 
activity ; madness ; or death. The first, with longer life, 
was still possible, though not probable ; for physical 



58 BURNS. 

causes were beginning to be concerned in it : and yet 
Burns had an iron resolution; could he but have seen 
and felt, that not only his highest glory, but his first 
duty, and the true medicine for all his woes, lay here. 
5 The second was still less probable ; for his mind was 
ever among the clearest and firmest. So the milder 
third gate was opened for him: and he passed, not 
softly yet speedily, into that still country, where the 
hail-storms and fire-showers do not reach, and the heavi- 
10 est-laden wayfarer at length lays down his load ! 

A. Contemplating this sad end of Burns, and how he 

y^^ sank unaided by any real help, uncheered by any wise 

w^ sympathy, generous minds have sometimes figured to 

^ themselves, with a reproachful sorrow, that much might 

15 have been done for him; that by counsel, true affection 
and friendly ministrations, he might have been saved to 
himself and the world. We question whether there is 
not more tenderness of heart than soundness of judg- 
ment in these suggestions. It seems dubious to us 

20 whether the richest, wisest, most benevolent individual 
could have lent Burns any effectual help. Counsel, 
which seldom profits any one, he did not need ; in his 
understanding, he knew the right from the wrong, as 
well perhaps as any man ever did ; but the persuasion, 

25 which would have availed him, lies not so much in the 
head as in the heart, where no argument or expostula- 
tion could have assisted much to implant it. As to 
money again, we do not believe that this was his essen- 
tial want ; or well see how any private man could, even 

30 presupposing Burns's consent, have bestowed on him an 
independent fortune, with much prospect of decisive 
advantage. It is a mortifying truth, that two men in 
any rank of society, could hardly be found virtuous 



BURNS. 59 

enough to give money, and to take it as a necessary 
gift, without injury to the moral entireness of one or 
both. But so stands the fact : Friendship, in the old 
heroic sense of that term, no longer exists ; except in 
the cases of kindred or other legal affinity, it is in reality 5 
no longer expected, or recognised as a virtue among 
men. A close observer of manners has pronounced 
' Patronage,' that is, pecuniary or other economic further- 
ance, to be ' twice cursed ' ; cursing him that gives, and 
him that takes ! And thus, in regard to outward matters 10 
also, it has become the rule, as in regard to inward it 
always was and must be the rule, that no one shall look 
for effectual help to another ; but that each shall rest 
contented with what help he can afford himself. Such, 
we say, is the principle of modern Honour ; naturally 15 
enough growing out of that sentiment of Pride, which we 
inculcate and encourage as the basis of our whole social 
morality. Many a poet has been poorer than Burns ; 
but no one was ever prouder : we may question whether, 
without great precautions, even a pension from Royalty 20 
would not have galled and encumbered, more than 
actually assisted him. 

Still less, therefore, are we disposed to join with another 
class of Burns's admirers, who accuse the higher ranks 
among us of having ruined Burns by their selfish neglect 25 
of him. We have already stated our doubts whether direct 
pecuniary help, had it been offered, would have been 
accepted, or could have proved very effectual. We shall 
readily admit, however, that much was to be done for 
Burns; that many a poisoned arrow might have been 3c 
warded from his bosom; many an entanglement in his 
path cut asunder by the hand of the powerful ; and light 
and heat, shed on him from high places, would have 
made his humble atmosphere more genial ; and the soft- 



60 BC/A'JVS. 

est heart then breathing might have lived and died with 
some fewer pangs. Nay, we shall grant farther, and for 
Burns it is granting much, that, with all his pride, he 
would have thanked, even with exaggerated gratitude, any 
5 one who had cordially befriended him: patronage, unless 
once cursed, needed not to have been twice so. At all 
events, the poor promotion he desired in his calling might 
have been granted : it was his own scheme, therefore 
likelier than any other to be of service. All this it niight 

10 have been a luxury, nay it was a duty, for our nobility to 
have done. No part of all this, however, did any of them 
do; or apparently attempt, or wish to do: so much is 
granted against them. But what then is the amount of 
their blame } Simply that they were men of the world, 

15 and walked by the principles of such men ; that they 
treated Burns, as other nobles and other commoners had 
done other poets ; as the English did Shakspeare ; as 
King Charles and his Cavaliers did Ikitler, as King 
Philip and his Grandees did Cervantes. Do men gather 

3o grapes of thorns ; or shall we cut down our thorns for 
yielding only th fence and haws? How, indeed, could the 
'nobility and gentry of his native land ' hold out any help 
to this ' Scottish Bard, proud of his name and country ' ? 
Were the nobility and gentry so much as able rightly 

25 to help themselves ? Had they not their game to pre- 
serve ; their borough interests to strengthen ; dinners, 
therefore, of various kinds to eat and give 1 Were their 
means more than adequate to all this business, or less than 
adequate? Less than adequate, in general; few of them 

30 in reality were richer than Burns ; many of them were 
poorer ; for sometimes they had to wring their supplies, 
as with thumbscrews, from the hard hand ; and, in their 
need of guineas, to forget their duty of mercy ; which 
Burns was never reduced lo do. Let us pity and forgive 



BUKNS. 61 

them. The game they preserved and shot, the dinners 
tliey ate and gave, the borough interests they strengthened, 
the /i(t/e Jkibylons they severally builded by the glory of 
their might, are all melted or melting back into the pri- 
meval Chaos, as man's merely selfish endeavours are fated 5 
to do : and here was an action, extending, in virtue of its 
worldly influence, we may say, through all time ; in virtue 
of its moral nature, beyond all time, being immortal as 
the Spirit of Goodness itself; this action was offered 
them to do, and light was not given them to do it. Let us 10 
pity and forgive them. But better than pity, let us go 
and do otherwise. Human suffering did not end with the 
life of Burns; neither was the solemn mandate, ' Love 
one another, bear one another's burdens,' given to the 
rich only, but to all men. True, we shall find no Burns 15 
to relieve, to assuage by our aid or our pity; but celestial 
natures, groaning under the fardels of a weary life, we 
shall still find ; and that wretchedness which Fate has 
rendered voiceless and tuneless is not the least wretched 
but the most. 

Still, we do not think that the blame of Burns's failure 
lies chiefly with the world. The world, it seems to us, 
treated him with more rather than with less kindness than 
it usually shows to such men. It has ever, we fear, 
shown but small favour to its Teachers: hunger and 25 
nakedness, perils and revilings, the prison, the cross, the 
poison-chalice have, in most times and countries, been the 
market-price it has offered for Wisdom, the welcome with 
which it has greeted those who have come to enlighten 
and purify it. Homer and Socrates, and the Christian 30 
Apostles, belong to old days ; but the world's Martyr- 
ology was not completed with these. Roger Bacon and 
Galileo languish in priestly dungeons; Tasso pines in the 
cell of a madhouse ; Camoens dies begging on the streets of 




62 BURNS. 

Lisbon. So neglected, so * persecuted they the Prophets,' 
not in Judea only, but in all places where men have been. 
We reckon that every poet of Burns's order is, or should 
be, a prophet and teacher to his age ; that he has no 
5 right to expect great kindness from it, but rather is 
bound to do it great kindness ; that Burns, in particular, 
experienced fully the usual proportion of the world's 
goodness ; and that the blame of his failure, as we have 
said, lies not chiefly with the world. 

10 Where, then, does it lie } We are forced to answer : 
With himself ; it is his inward, not his outward misfor- 
tunes that bring him to the dust. Seldom, indeed, is it 
otherwise; seldom is a life morally wrecked but the grand 
cause lies in some internal mal-arrangement, some want 

15 less of good fortune than of good guidance. Nature fash- 
ions no creature without implanting in it the strength 
needful for its action and duration ; least of all does she 
so neglect her masterpiece and darling, the poetic soul. 
Neither can we believe that it is in the power of atiy ex- 

\o ternal circumstances utterly to ruin the mind of a man; 
nay if proper wisdom be given him, even so much as to 
affect its essential health and beauty. The sternest sum- 
total of all worldly misfortunes is Death ; nothing more 
can lie in the cup of human woe : yet many men, in all 

25 ages, have triumphed over Death, and led it captive; 
converting its physical victory into a moral victory for 
themselves, into a real and immortal consecration for all 
that their past life had achieved. What hasHSecn done, 
may be done again : nay, it is but the degree and not the 

30 kind of such heroism tJiat dilTers in different seasons ; 
for without some portion of this spirit, not of boisterous 
daring, but of silent fearlessness, of Self-denial in all its 
forms, no good man, in any scene or time, has ever 
attained to be good. 



BURNS. 63 

We have already stated the error of Burns; and 
mourned over it, rather than blamed it. It was the want 

(of unity in his purposes, of consistency in his aims ; the 
hapless attempt to mingle in friendly union the common 
spirit of the world with the spirit of poetry, which is of a 5 
J far different and alto^ether^ rreconcilable nature. Burns 
was nothing wholly, and Burns could be nothing, no man 
formed as he was can be anything, by halves. The heart, 
not of a mere hot-blooded, popular Versemonger^ or poet- 
ical Rcstaurafei^ r. but of a true Poet and Singer, worthy 10 
of the old religious heroic times, had been given him: 
and he fell in an age, not of heroism and religion, but of 
scepticism, selfishness and triviality, when true Nobleness 
was little understood, and its place supplied by a hollow, 
dissocial, altogether barren and unfruitful principle of 15 
Pride. The influences of that age, his open, kind, si^s- ^ 
cej^tibl^ nature, to say nothing of his highly untoward 
situation, made it more than usually difficult for him to 
cast aside, or rightly subordinate ; the better spirit that 
was within him ever sternly demanded its rights, its 20 
supremacy : he spent his life in endeavouring to reconcile 
these two ; and lost it, as he must lose it, without recon- 
ciling them. 

Burns was born poor ; and born also to continue poor, 
for he would not endeavour to be otherwise : this it had 25 
been well could he have once for all admitted, and con- 
idered as finally settled. He was poor, truly; but hun- 
dreds even of his own class and order of minds have been 
poorer, yet have suffered nothing deadly from it: nay, 
his own Father had a far sorer battle with ungrateful 30 
destiny than his was ; and he did not yield to it, but died 
courageously warring, and to all moral intents prevailing, 
against it. True, Burns had little meansThaS even little 
time for poetry, his only real pursuit and vocation ; but 



K 



NX 



64 BURN'S. 

SO much the more precious was what little he had. In all 
these external respects his case was hard ; but very far 
from the hardest. Poverty, incessant ^ri] ( ^;| o^pry anrl much 
worse evils, it has often been the lot of Poets and wise 

5 men to strive with, and their glory to conquer. Locke 
was banished as a traitor ; and wrote his Essay oti the 
Hu77tan Understanding sheltering himself in a Dutch gar- 
ret. Was Milton rich or at his ease when he composed 
Paradise Lost / Not only low, but fallen from a height ; 

10 not only poor, but impoverished ; in darkness and with 
dangers compassed round, he sang his immortal song, 
and found fit audience, though few. Did not Cervantes 
finish his work, a maimed soldier and in prison t Nay, 
was not the Araucafia, which Spain acknowledges as its 

15 Epic, written without even the aid of paper; on scraps 
of leather, as the stout fighter and voyager snatched any 
moment from that wild warfare .-* 

And what, then, had these men, which Burns wanted ? 
Two things ; both which, it seems to us, are indispen- 

20 sable for such men. They had a true, religious principle 
of morals ; and a single, not a double aim in their activity. 
They were not self-seekers and self-worshippers ; but 
seekers and worshippers of something far better than Self. 
Not personal enjoyment was their object ; but a high, 

25 heroic idea of Religion, of Patriotism, of heavenly Wis- 
dom, in one or the other form, ever hovered before them ; 
in which cause they neither shrank from suffering, nor 
called on the earth to witness it as something wonderful; 
but patiently endured, counting it blessedness enough so 

30 to spend and be spent. Thus the 'golden-calf of Self- 
love,' however curiously carved, was not their Deity; 
but the Invisible Goodness, which alone is man's reason- 
able service. This feeling was as a celestial fountain, 
whose streams refreshed into gladness and beauty all the 



ai 



BURNS. 65 

provinces of their otherwise too desolate existence. In a 
word, they willed one thing, to which all other things 
were subordinated and made subservient ; and therefore 
they accomplished it. , The wedge will rend rocks; but 
its edge must be sharp and single : if it be double, the 5 
wedge is bruised in pieces and will rend nothing. 
L Part of this superiority these men owed to their age ; in 
" which heroism and devotedness were still practised, or at 
least not yet disbelieved in : but much of it likewise they 
owed to themselves. With Burns, again, it was different. 10 
His morality,in most of its practical points, is that of a mere 
worldly man; enjoyment, in a finer or coarser shape, is 
the only thing he longs and strives for. A noble instinct 
sometimes raises him above this ; but an instinct only, 
and acting only for moments. He has no Religion ; in 15 
the shallow age, where his days were cast, Religion was 
not discriminated from the New and Old Vight forms of 
Religion ; and was, with these, becoming obsolete in the 
minds of men. His heart, indeed, is alive with a trem- 
bling adoration, but there is no temple in his understand- 20 
ing. He lives in darkness and in the shadow of doubt. 
His religion, at best, is an anxious wish; like that of 
Rabelais, * a great Perhaps.' 

He loved Poetry warmly, and in his heart ; could he 
but have loved it purely, and with his whole undivided 25 
heart, it had been well. For Poetry, as Burns could have 
followed it, is but another form of Wisdom, of Religion; 
is itself Wisdom and Religion. But this also was denied 
him. His poetry is a stray vagrant gleam, which will not 
be extinguished within him, yet rises not to be the true 30 
light of his path, but is often a wildfire that misleads him. 
It was not necessary for Burns to be rich, to be, or to 
seem, ' independent ' ; but it was necessary for him to be 
at one with his own heart; to place what was highest in his 



H 

^ 



^ 

&. 



66 BURNS. 

nature highest also in his life ; ' to seek within himself fof 
that consistency and sequence, which external events would 
forever refuse him.' He was born a poet ; poetry was 
the celestial element of his being, and should have been 
5 the soul of his whole endeavours. Lifted into that serene 
ether, whither he had wings given him to mount, he 
would have needed no other elevation : poverty, neglect 
and all evil, save the desecration of himself and his Art, 
were a small matter to him ; the pride and the passions ^ 

lo of the world lay far beneath his feet ; and he looked down 
alike on noble and slave, on prince and beggar, and all 
that wore the stamp of man, with clear recognition, with 
brotherly affection, with sympathy, with pity. Nay, we 
question whether for his culture as a Poet poverty and 

r5 much suffering for a season were not absolutely advan- 
tageous. Great men, in looking back over their lives, 
have testified to that effect. ' 1 would not for much,' says 
Jean Paul, 'that I had been born richer.' And yet Paul's 
birth was poor enough; for, in another place, he adds: 

20 ' The prisoner's allowance is bread and water; and I had 
often only the latter.' But the gold that is refined in the 
hottest furnace comes out the purest ; or, as he has himself 
expressed it, ' the canary-bird sings sweeter the longer it 
has been trained in a darkened cage.' 

25 A man like Burns might have divided his hours be- 
tween poetry and virtuous industry ; industry which all ^f 
true feeling sanctions, nay prescribes, and which has 
a beauty, for that cause, beyond the pomp of thrones: 
but to divide his hours between poetry and rich men's 

30 banquets was an ill-starred and y^uspirinn.s attempt. 
How could he be at ease at such banquets "i What had 
he to do there, mingling his music with the coarse roar of 
altogether earthly voices ; brightening the thick smoke of 
intoxication with fire lent him from heaven? Was it his 



BURNS. 67 

Aim to enjoy life ? Tomorrow he must go drudge as an 
Exciseman ! We wonder not that Burns became moody, 
indignant, and at times an offender against certain rules 
of society ; but rather that he did not grow utterly frantic, 
and ran ajunck against them all. How could a man, so 5 
falsely placed by his own or others' fault, ever know con- 
tentment or peaceable diligence for an hour ? What he 
did, under such perverse guidance, and what he forbore 
to do, alike fill us with astonishment at the natural 
strength and worth of his character. 10 

Doubtless there was a remedy for this perverseness; 
I but not in others; only in himself; least of all in simple 
increase of wealth and worldly ' respectability.' We hope 
we have now heard enough about the efficacy of wealth 
for poetry, and to make poets happy. Nay have we not 15 
seen another instance of it in these very days ? Byron, a 
man of an endowment considerably less ethereal than that 
of Burns, is born in the rank not of a Scottish ploughman, 
but of an English peer: the highest worldly honours, the 
fairest worldly career, are his by inheritance; the richest 20 
harvest of fame he soon reaps, in another province, by 
his own hand. And what does all this avail him ? Is he 
happy, is he good, is he true ? Alas, he has a poet's soul, 
and strives towards the Infinite and the Eternal; and soon 
feels that all this is but mounting to the house-top to 25 
reach the stars ! Like Burns, he is only a proud man ; 
might, like him, have 'purchased a pocket-copy of Milton 
to study the character of Satan '; for Satan also is Byron's 
grand exemplar, the hero of his poetry, and the model 
apparently of his conduct. As in ]Jurns's case too, the 3° 
celestial element will not mingle with the clay of earth; 
both poet and man of the world he must not be; vulgar 
Ambition will not live kindly with poetic Adoration; he 
cannot serve God and Mammon. Byron, like Burns, is 



68 BURNS. 

not happy; nay he is the most wretched of all men. His 
life is falsely arranged: the fire that is in him is not a 
strong, still, central fire, warming into beauty the products 
of a world; but it is the mad fire of a volcano; and now 

5 — we look sadly into the ashes of a crater, which ere long 
will fill itself with snow ! 

Byron and Burns were sent forth as missionaries to 
their generation, to teach it a higher Doctrine, a purer 
Truth; they had a message to deliver, which left them no 

10 rest till it was accomplished; in dim throes of pain, this 
divine behest lay smouldering within them; for they knew 
not what it meant, and felt it only in mysterious anticipa- 
tion, and they had to die without articulate ly uttering it. 
They are in the camp of the Unconverted; yet not as high 

15 messengers of rigoro us though benignant truth, but as 
soft flattering singers, and in pleasant teilowship will they 
live there: they are first adulated, then persecuted; they 
accomplish little for others; they find no peace for them- 
selves, but only death and the peace of the grave. We 

20 confess, it is not without a certain mournful awe that we 
view the fate of these noble souls, so richly gifted, yet 
ruined to so little purpose with all their gifts. It seems 
to us there is a stern moral taught in this piece of history, 
— haice told us in our own time ! Surely to men of like 

25 genius, if there be any such, it carries with it a lesson of 
deep impressive significance. Surely it would become 
such a man, furnished for the highest of all enterprises, 
that of being the Poet of his Age, to consider well what 
it is that he attempts, and in what spirit he attempts it. 

30 For the words of Milton are true in all times, and were 
never truer than in this: 'He who would write heroic 
poems must make his whole life a heroic poem.' If he 
cannot first so make his life, then let him hasten from 
this arena ; for neither its lofty glories, nor its fearful 



BURNS. 69 

perils, are fit for him. Let him dwindle into a modish 
balladmonger; let him worship and besing the idols of 
the time, and the time will not fail to reward him. If, 
indeed, he can endure to live in that capacity ! Byron 
and Burns could not live as idol-priests, but the fire of 5 
their own hearts consumed them; and better it was for 
them that they could not. For it is not in the favour of 
the great or of the small, but in a life of truth, and in the 
inexpugnjijy_e citadel of his own soul, that a Byron's or a 
Burns's strength must lie. Let the great stand aloof from 10 
him, or know how to reverence him. Beautiful is the 
union of wealth with favour and furtherance for litera- 
ture; like the costliest flower-jar enclosing the loveliest 
amaranth. Yet let not the relation be mistaken. A true 
poet IS not one whom they can hire by money or flattery to 15 
be a minister of their pleasures, their writer of occasional 
verses, their pur veyor of table-wit ; he cannot be their men- 
ial, he cannot even be their partisan. At the peril of both 
parties, let no such union be attempted ! Will a Courser 
of the Sun work softly in the harness of a Dray-horse? 20 
His hoofs are of fire, and his path is through the heavens, 
bringing light to all lands; will he lumber on mud high- 
ways, dragging ale for earthly appetites from door to door? 
But we must stop short in these considerations, which 
would lead us to boundless lengths. We had something 25 
J to say on the public moral character of Burns; but this 
"Nilso we must forbear. We are far from regarding him as 
**# guilty before the world, as guiltier than the average; nay 
from doubting that he is less guilty than one of ten thou- 
sand. Tried at a tribunal far more rigid than that where 30 
the Plebiscita of common civic reputations are pronounced, 
he has seemed to us even there less worthy of blame than 
of pity and wonder. But the world is habitually unjust 
in its judgments of such men; unjust on many grounds, 



^ 



70 BURNS. 

of which this one may be stated as the substance: It 
decides, like a court of law, by dead statutes; and not 
positively but negatively, less on what is done right, than 
on what is or is not done wrong. Not the few inches of 
5 deflection from the mathematical orbit, which are so easily 
measured, but the ratio of these to the whole diameter, 
constitutes the real aberration. This orbit may be a 
planet's, its diameter the breadth of the solar system ; or 
it may be a city hippodrome; nay the circle of a ginhorse, 

10 its diameter a score of feet or paces. But the inches of 
deflection only are measured: and it is assumed that the 
diameter of the ginhorse, and that of the planet, will yield 
the same ratio when compared with them 1 Here lies the 
root of many a blind, cruel condemnation of Burnses, 

15 Swifts, Rousseaus, which one never listens to with ap- 
proval. Granted, the ship comes into harbour with shrouds 
and tackle damaged; the pilot is blameworthy; he has not 
been all-wise and all-powerful : but to know how blame- 
worthy, tell us first whether his voyage has been round 

20 the Globe, or only to Ramsgate and the Isle of Dogs. 

With our readers in general, with men of right feeling 
anywhere, we are not required to plead for Burns. In 
pitying admiration he lies enshrined in all our hearts, in 
a far nobler mausolf ""^ than that one of marble ; neither 

25 will his Works, even as they are, pass away from the 
memory of men. While the Shakspeares and Miltons 
roll on like mighty rivers through the country of Thought, 
bearing fleets of traffickers and a ssiduous pearl-fishers on 
their waves; this little Valclusa Fountain will also arrest 

30 our eye: for this also is of Nature's own and most cun- 
ning workmanship, bursts from the depths of the earth, 
with a full gushing current, into the light of day; and 
often will the traveller turn aside to drink of its clear 
waters, and muse among its rocks and pines ! 



NOTES. 



1 2. Butler. Are there not good reasons why the author of Hudi 
bras should not have expected to be a general favorite ? 

1 15. brave mausoleum. At Dumfries, where Burns spent the last 
five years of his life. In it were buried the poet, his wife and children. 

In 1820 the foundation stone was laid for the monument on AUoway 
Croft, near the Auld Brig of Doon. ;!^3300 was subscribed for this 
purpose. 

Eleven years later work began on the Edinburgh monument, which 
cost even more. 

There are statues of Burns in Glasgow, Kilmarnock, New York, 
Dundee, Dumfries, London, Albany (N.Y.), Ayr, Aberdeen, Irvine, 
Paisley, Chicago, and other places. 

2 12. Lucy's. It was in Lucy's park, says tradition, that Shakspere 
did his deer-stealing. On evidence of equal value is based the legend 
which names him as the author of a doggerel epitaph on John a Combe. 

2 22. Excise Commissioners. Cf. p. 10, 11, 27-30. 

2 22. Gentlemen of the Caledonian Hunt. A company of Scottish 
noblemen and gentry interested in field sports. They allowed Burns to 
dedicate to them the second edition of his poems, and subscribed indi- 
vidually for copies. Directly and indirectly, the members of this 
aristocratic association were very helpful to the young poet. 

2 23. Dumfries Aristocracy. Dumfries, " a great stage on the road 
from England to Ireland," was a small provincial town notable for its 
public entertainments. The Caledonian Hunt sometimes met there ; 
the country gentlemen often. Parties of strangers would send for 
Burns, " the standing marvel of the place," and he weakly went to 
amuse them with his jokes, toasts, and songs. 

2 25. New and Old Light Clergy. The New Lights were more lib- 
eral, more progressive than the Old Lights. The two factions of the 
Church were at sword's points- Bums naturally sympathized with the 
New Lights. 



72 NOTES. 

4 3. Constable's Miscellany. Constable was a well-known Edin 
burgh publisher. LockJiart's Life came out in April, 182S. Th^ whole 
impression was exhausted in six weeks. Before the end of the year 
Carlyle's review of Lockhart's volume had "raised the enthusiasm of 
the world on the subject." 

4 13. Mr. Morris Birkbeck, author of Notes on a Journey in America, 
from the Coast of Virginia to the Territory of Illinois^ 2d ed., London- 
1818. 

6 10. An educated man. Contrast with this short life Milton's 
period of preparation for writing. It has been said that the noble mind 
needs abundant leisure. 

6 26. Condition the most disadvantageous. Cf. p. 66, 11. 13 ff. 
" Nay, we question whether for his culture as a Poet poverty and much 
suffering for a season were not absolutely advantageous," etc. 

6 31. Ferguson or Ramsay. Ramsay, who died about a year before 
Burns was born, has been called the most famous Scottish poet of the 
period. The Gentle Shepherd was a classic to the people. Burns, 
in writing of " the excellent Ramsay and the still more excellent Fer- 
guson," shows better judgment than most of the critics, according to 
Professor Hugh Walker and Mr. Wallace. These Scottish poets and 
their followers broke away from the traditions of the 'correct ' poets and 
practiced "much of what is l)est in \yordsvvorth's doctrine of poetic 
diction and of the proper subjects for poetic treatment." 

Burns imitated Ferguson oftener than any other poet. Burns never 
forgot his obligations to F'erguson. He writes : " Rhyme I had given 
up [on going to Irvine], but, meeting with Ferguson's Scottish Poems, 
I strung anew my wildly sounding lyre with emulating vigour." And 
in raising a simple monument to the memory of Ferguson, he honored 
what was probably up to this point " the best expression of the spirit 
which animated himself." 

7 25. Criticism ... a cold business. The world still needs sym- 
pathetic critics. Cf. Dr. Henry Van Dyke's The Poetry of Tennyson, 
a fine specimen of literary appreciation. Cf. also Matthew Arnold's 
theory of criticism. 

10 2.''). .Solian harp. Ruskin says he knows no poetry so sorrow- 
ful as Scott's. " vScott is inherently and consistently sad. Around all 
his power and brightness and enjoyment of eye and heart, the far-away 
iliolian knell is forever sounding." 

10 30. gauging ale barrels ! " The excise scheme was a pet one 
of the bard's own, and consideration of that fact ought to have checked 
the indignant utterances of Carlyle and others of smaller note who 



NOTES. 73 

declaimed against his friendly patrons for finding no better post for him 
than ' a Gaugership.'" — W. S. Douglas. 
12 18. Si vis me flere. 

Si vis me flere, dolendum est 
primum ipsi tibi. 

— Horace: De Arte Poetica Liber, 11. 102, 103. 

" If you would have me weep, you yourself must first know sorrow." 

15 21. . Mrs. Dunlop. During a period of depression Mrs. Dunlop, 
a wealthy woman of high rank, happened to read The Cotter^s Saturday 
Night. The faithful, simple description charmed her back to her nor- 
mal condition. Her interest in this poem was the beginning of a cor- 
respondence that lasted as long as Burns lived. Of all his friendships, 
says Gilbert Burns, " none seemed more agreeable to him than that of 
Mrs. Dunlop." Naturally enough, letters written to such a friend 
furnish very interesting material for the poet's biography. 

17 17. a vates. The function of "legislators, prophets, philoso- 
phers, poets ... is always the same, to call back to nature and truth 
the spoiled children of convention and affectation. Of these messen- 
gers, the most wide in his range, and most generally accepted, is the 
poet ; for, while the legislator is often cramped by the hardness of the 
materials with which he has to deal, and the prophet too often has his 
influence confined and bound by the very forms of a church which owed 
its existence, perhaps, to his ca^tholicity, the great poet in his honest 
utterances is hampered by no forces external to his own genius. 

" The works of such great poets — for we do not speak here of mere 
dressers of pretty fancies — are a real evangel of Nature to all people 
who have ears to hear. Such men were Homer and Pindar to the 
Greeks; Horace and Virgil to the Romans; to the English, Shakspere 
and Wordsworth ; to Scotland, Walter Scott and Robert Burns." — 
Black IE. 

17 24. Minerva Press. A London press, noted in the eighteenth 
century for turning out sentimental novels. 

18 14. Borgia. Although Macchiavelli in his " Principe " represents 
this skillful politician as a model ruler, the name still stands for cruelty 
and treachery. 

18 17. Mossgiel and Tarbolton. ^ee Otitline of the Life of Burns. 
18 19. Crockford's. A famous gaming club-house in London. 
20 IS. Retzsch. A German etcher and painter, famous for his etch 
ings ill'jstrating works of Goethe, Schiller, and Shakspere. 



74 NOTES. 

22 11 Clearness of Sight. Kuskin says :" The greatest thing a 
human soul ever does in this world is to see something, and tell what it 
saw in a plain way. Hundreds of people can talk for one who can think, 
but thousands can think for one who can see. To see clearly is poetry, 
prophecy, and religion, — all in one." 

" The world of Literature is more or less divided into Thinkers and 
Seers. ... I believe . . . the Seers are wholly the greater race of the 
two." 

" A true Thinker, who has practical purpose in his thinking, and is 
sincere, as Plato or Carlyle or Helps, becomes in some sort a seer, and 
must be always of infinite use in his generation." — RusKiN on Scott, 
Modern Painters^ vol. HI, part iv, " Of Many Things." 

23 6. red-wat-shod. Wat means wet. 

23 23. Keats. Is Carlyle's criticism of Keats appreciative ? 

24 3. Novum Organum. One of Bacon's scientific works. Macau- 
lay says : "The Novum Organum and \.\\e De Augmentis are much 
talked of, but little read. They have produced, indeed, a vast effect on 
the opinions of mankind ; but they have produced it through the opera- 
tion of intermediate agents. They have moved the intellects which 
have moved the world." 

27 12. Dr. Slop. Carlyle quotes from Sterne's Tristrayn Shandy, 
a book which Burns " devoured at meals, spoon in hand." 

28 20. Scots wha hae wi' Wallace bled. Mr. Quiller Couch says 
that Batinockburii seems to him to be rant ; "very fine rant — inspired 
rant, if you will — hovering on the borders of poetry." 

Mr. Wallace says : " Under cover of a fourteenth century battle-song 
he [Burns] was really liberating his soul against the Tory tyranny that 
was opposing liberty at home and abroad, and, moreover, striking at the 
comfort of his own fireside." 

29 5. Cacus. A giant. 

31 1. Tieck . . . Musaus. Each of these Germans wrote Ger- 
man folk tales. The chief note of those of Musaus is said to be their 
artificial naivete. Yet the" satirical humour, quaint fancy, and grace- 
ful writing " have made them a classic of their kind. 

31 16. Tam o' Shanter. Both Lockhart and Cunningham give 
some account of the day on which Burns wrote the poem which he con- 
sidered his masterpiece. Principal Shairp also tells the story in his 
Robert Burns, p. 1 2 1 . 

Scott had Tarn </ Shanter in mind when he said that " no poet, with 
the exception of Shakspere, ever possessed the power of e.xciting the 
most varied and discordant emotions with such rapid transitions." 



NOTES. 75 

31 34. * Poosie Nansie.* Ii was in her alehouse that the raude 
carlin (fearless crone), the wee Apollo, the Son of Mars, and the others 
met for their good time. 

32 21. Beggars' Opera. An eighteenth-century production by John 
Gay. He transforms a motley company of highwaymen, pickpockets, 
etc., into a group of fine gentlemen and ladies in order to satirize the 
corrupt political conditions of the time. 

Beggars' Bush. A seventeenth-century work by John Fletcher and 
others. 

32 28. his Songs. Emerson said the reason why the great English 
race, all over the world, honored the poet as it did on the hundredth 
anniversary of his birth was because " Robert Burns, the poet of the 
middle class, represents in the mind of men to-day that great uprising 
of the middle class against the armed and privileged minorities, that 
uprising which worked politically in the American and P>ench Revolu- 
tions, and which, not in governments so much as in education and 
social order, has changed the face of the world. . . . The Confession 
of Augsburg, the Declaration of Independence, the French Rights of 
Man, and the ' Marseillaise ' are not more weighty documents in the his- 
tory of freedom than the songs of Burns." 

33 12. Ossorius (Osorio). Bacon comments on the tendency of 
this man to sacrifice substance to style. A philosophical writer, his 
chief work is a Latin history of the reign of Emanuel I. 

34 27. our Fletcher's aphorism. Andrew Fletcher, a famous Scot- 
tish patriot. For a short account of the man, and an exact quotation 
of the saying that has made him famous, see Chambers's Encyclo- 
pedia. 

35 21. Grays and Glovers. Why does Carlyle mention Glover in 
connection with Gray ? Stopford Brooke says, " The ' Elegy ' will always 
remain one of the beloved poems of Englishmen. It is not only a 
piece of exquisite work ; it is steeped in England." 

36 3. Boston (Thomas). Carlyle mentions the best-known work 
of this Scotch Presbyterian divine. His influence as a Calvinistic 
theologian is said to have affected several generations of Scottish 
people. 

36 29. La Fllche. A town in P>ance where the famous Scottish 
philosopher and historian, David Hume, spent three years. He de- 
scribes himself as wandering about there " in solitude, and dreaming the 
dream of his philosophy." 

41 4. Mossgiel. The town in which Burns did most of his best 
work. 



76 NOTES. 

45 II. character for sobriety . . . destroyed. Hums was then living 
at Mossgiei. During these years, his brother Gilbert says, "his temper- 
ance and frugality were everything that could be desired." Mr. Scott 
Douglas adds: "The effect of prevalent misconception on this point 
is visible, even in Mr. Carlyle's in many respects incomparable essay. 
The poet had at Kirkoswald and Irvine learned to drink, and he was 
all his life liable to social excesses, but it is unfair to say that his ' char- 
acter for sobriety was destroyed.' " 

46 11. a mad Rienzi. A Roman political reformer of the fourteenth 
century. "The nobles never acknowledged his government . . . and 
the populace became so infuriated by his arbitrary measures that a 
crowd surrounded him on the stairs of the Capitol and killed him." 

47 2(». Virgilium vidi tantum. I have caught a glimpse of Virgil. 

48 i>:i. Mr. Nasmyth's picture. See Life and Works of Robert 
/turns by Dr. Robert Chambers, 1896 edition, by William Wallace, vol. 
II, p. 55, for an engraving from this portrait. 

49 a;«. in malem partem, disparagingly. 

50 ai. good old Blacklock. lUirns says : *' Dr. IMacklock belonged 
to a set of critics for whose applause I had x\o\. dared to hope y Dr. 
Thomas Hlacklock, of Kdinburgh, was a blind poet, of whom Dr. John- 
son wrote that he "looked on him with reverence." [Letter to Mrs. 
Thrale, lulinburgh, August 17, 1773.] Upon hearing Burns's poems 
read he wnjte an appreciative letter to their common friend Dr. Law- 
rie, urging that a second edition be printed at once. lUirns says: " Dr. 
Blacklock's idea that 1 should meet every encouragement for a second 
eilition fired me so much that away I posted to Edinburgh." 

51 27. Excise and Farm scheme. Hums felt compelled to under- 
take the excise work in order to eke out the scanty income his farm 
yielded. 

52 .'^>. preferred self help. " liurns, however, asked nothing from 
his Kdinburgh friends ; when they helped him to a farm and a position 
in the Excise, believing, as they apparently did, that they were thereby 
gratifying his own wishes, he made no complaint, but cheerfully pre- 
pared himself for the necessarily uncongenial career which alone 
appeared open to him." — William Wallace's Life. 

5.^ 9. Maecenas. The friend and patrmi of Horace and Virgil. 

54 iil. collision with . . . Superiors. Hums writes: "I have been 
surprised, confounded, and distracted by Mr. Mitchell, the Collector, 
telling me that he has received an order from your Hoard [the Scottish 
Hoaril of ICxcise] to in{[uire into my i)olitical conduct, and blaming me 
as a person disaffected to Government." Hut it seems clear that he was 



NOTES. 77 

not very severely reprimanded at headquarters, because later in this 
same year the official record is, '* The Poet ; does pretty well." 

Cf. "The Dcil's Awa Wi' Th' Exciseman," and the story of the cir- 
cumstances under which it was written. 

55 8. Dumfries Aristocracy. " If there is any truth in the story, 
on which so much false sentiment has been wasted, about Hums walk- 
ing the shady side of the street while the Dumfries gentry on the other 
side would not recognise him, it proves at all events that Burns knew 
no reason why he should not show himself on the street as well as the 
proudest among them." — Wallace. 

In January, 1794, "about the time usually selected for his final sur- 
render to the drink-fiend," Burns wrote : * Some . . . have conceived a 
prejudice against me as being a drunken, dissipated character. I might 
be all this, you know, and yet be an honest fellow ; but you know that 
I am an honest fellow and am nothing of this.* 

57 12. a volunteer. In 1795, ^'li^e a large part of the regular army 
was fighting against France abroad, Dumfries raised two comijanies of 
volunteers. Among the liberals, against whom severe accusations had 
been made, and who welcomed this opportunity to show their loyalty, 
was Burns. Cunningham says he well remembers the swarthy, stooping 
ploughman handling his arms with " indifferent dexterity " in this 
respectable and picturesque corps. As a further indication of the poet's 
feeling he wrote The Dtinifries Volunteers, a ballad that first appeared 
in the Dumfries Journal and was at once reprinted in other newspapers 
and magazines. 

60 7. promotion. To escape the " incessant drudgery " of the 
Supervisorsliip, Burns wanted to be the Excise Collector. He thought 
this position would give him '• a decent competence " and " a life of 
literary leisure." He would ask for nothing more. 

Butler. Cf. p. i. 

61 :j2. Roger Bacon. His Optis Majus ("Greater Work") is, to 
borrow the phrase of Dr. Whewell,"at once the Encyclopedia and the 
Ahwuni Organum of the thirteenth century." " * Unheard, forgotten, 
buried,' the old man died as he had lived, and it has been reserved for 
later ages to roll away the obscurity that had gathered round his mem- 
ory, and to place first in the great roll of modern science the name of 
Roger Bacon." — J. R. Grkkn, Short History of the English People, p. 
141. See Novum Organum, p. 24 of this essay, and the note. 

61 3.1. Tasso pines in the cell of a madhouse. During these seven 
years of confinement his greatest work was read all over Europe. It is 
said that he is the last Italian poet whose influence made itself felt 



78 NOTES. 

throughout Europe, and that his Jerusalem is the "culminating poetical 
product" of the sixteenth century, as Dante's Divine Comedy is of the 
fourteenth. 

61 34. Camoens. A celebrated Portuguese poet of the sixteenth 
century. 

64 14. Araucana. By Alonso de Ercilla. 

65 15. He has no Religion. Carlyle did a great deal of vigorous 
thinking on the subject of religion. "A man's religion," he says, "is 
the chief fact with regard to him. . . . The thing a man does practi- 
cally believe (and this is often enough without asserting it even to him- 
self, much less to others); the thing a man does practically lay to heart, 
and know for certain concerning his vital relations to this mysterious 
Universe, and his duty and destiny there, that is in all cases the primary 
thing for him, and creatively determines all the rest. That is his 
religion; or, it may be, his mere scepticism and no-religion." Again 
Carlyle says of the man who has a religion : " Hourly and daily, for 
himself and for the whole world, a faithful, unspoken, but not ineffec- 
tual prayer rises : ' Thy will be done.' His whole work on earth is an 
emblematic spoken or acted prayer : ' 13e the will of God done on Earth 
— not the Devil's will or any of the Devil's servants' ^\ills ! ' . . . He 
has a religion, this man ; an everlasting Load-star that beams the 
brighter in the Heavens, the darker here on Earth grows the night 
around him." 

These citations may help us decide what Carlyle meant by saying 
that Bums had no religion. We are glad to have him add : " His 
religion, at best, is an anxious wish ; like that of Rabelais, ' a great Per- 
haps.' " Some of us may agree with Professor Hugh Walker that there 
is only a half-truth in this concession, and that " Carlyle, in most respects 
so appreciative and so keen-sighted, is surely in error when he says that 
Bums had no religion." We can hardly escape the conclusion that 
Burns was at times strongly influenced by his religious hope. There are 
passages in several of his poems that we must not disregard; and in his 
letters he sometimes throws light on his religious views. For example, 
in a letter to Mrs. Dunlop, 1788, he writes: " Some things in your late 
letters hurt me ; not that yoti say them., but that you mistake me. 
Religion, my honored madam, has not only been all my life my chief 
dependence, but my dearest enjoyment. I have indeed been the 
luckless victim of wayward follies ; but, alas ! I have ever been * more 
fool than knave.' A mathematician without religion is a probable 
character; an irreligious poet is a monster." Some two years earlier 
he had written: " O, thou great unknown Power I Thou Almighty 



NOTES. 79 

God I who hast lighted up reason in my breast, and blessed me with 
immortality ! I have frequently wandered from that order and regu- 
larity necessary for the perfection of thy works, yet thou hast never left 
me nor forsaken me ! " 

70 20. Ramsgate. A seaport in Kent, sixty-five miles from London. 

70 20. Isle of Dogs. A peninsula on the bank of the Thames, 
opposite Greenwich. 

70 29. Valclusa. Valcluse, near Avignon, was the quiet country 
home of 

" Fraunceys Petrark, . . . whose rethorike swete 
Enlumined al Itaille of poetrye." 



CARLYLE'S SUMMARY. 



Our grand maxim of supply and demand. Living misery and post- 
humous glory. The character of Burns a theme that cannot easily 
become exhausted. His Biographers. Perfection in Biography. — Burns 
one of the most considerable British men of the eighteenth century : 
an age the most prosaic Britain had yet seen. His hard and most dis- 
advantageous conditions. Not merely as a Poet, but as a Man, that he 
chiefly interests and affects us. His life a deeper tragedy than any 
brawling Napoleon's. His heart, erring and at length broken, full of 
inborn riches, of love to all living and lifeless things. The Peasant 
Poet bears himself among the low, with whom his lot is cast, like a 
King in exile. — His Writings but a poor mutilated fraction of what was 
in him, yet of a quality enduring as the English tongue. He wrote, 
not from hearsay, but from sight and actual experience. This, easy as 
it looks, the fundamental difficulty which all poets have to strive ^^^th. 
Byron, heartily as he detested insincerity, far enough from faultless. 
No poet of Burns's susceptibility from first to last so totally free from 
affectation. Some of his Letters, however, by no means deserve this 
praise. His singular power of making all subjects, even the most 
homely, interesting. Wherever there is a sky above him, and a world 
around him, the poet is in his place. Every genius an impossibility 
till he appears. — Burns's rugged earnest truth, yet tenderness and sweet 
native grace. His clear, graphic 'descriptive touches' and piercing 
emphasis of thought. Professor Stewart's testimony to liurns's intel- 
lectual vigour. A deeper insight than any 'doctrine of association.' 
In the Poetry of Burns keenness of insight keeps pace with keenness of 
feeling. Loving Indignation and good Hatred: Scots wha hae ; Mac- 
phersofi's Farrcuell : Sunny buoyant floods of Humour. — Imperfections 
of Burns's poetry : Tarn o* S/iauter, not a true poem so much as a piece 
of sparkling rhetoric : The Jo/Iy Beggars, the most complete and perfect 
as a poetical composition. His Songs the most truly inspired and most 
deeply felt of all his poems. His influence on the hearts and literature 
of his country : Literary patriotism. — Burns's acted Works even more 
interesting than his written ones ; and these too, alas, but a fragment ; 



SUMMARY. 81 

His passionate youth never passed into clear and steadfast manhood. 
The only true happiness of a man : Often it is the greatest minds that 
are latest in obtaining it : Burns and Byron, l^urns's hard-worked, 
yet happy boyhood : His estimable parents. Early dissipations. In 
Necessity and Obedience a man should find his highest Freedom. — 
Religious quarrels and scepticisms. Faithlessness : Exile and black- 
est desperation. Invited to Edinburgh : A Napoleon among the 
crowned sovereigns of Literature. Sir Walter Scott's reminiscence of 
an interview with Burns. Burns's calm, manly bearing amongst the 
Edinburgh aristocracy. His bitter feeling of his own indigence. By 
the great he is treated in the customary fashion ; and each party goes 
his several way. — What Burns was next to do, or to avoid : His Excise- 
and-Farm scheme not an unreasonable one : No failure of external 
means, but of internal, that overtook Burns. Good beginnings. Patrons 
of genius and picturesque tourists : Their moral rottenness, by which 
he became infected, gradually eat out the heart of his life. Meteors of 
French Politics rise before him, but they are not his stars. Calumny 
is busy with him. The little great-folk of Dumfries : Burns's desola- 
tion. In his destitution and degradation one act of self-devoted ness 
still open to him : Not as a hired soldier, but as a patriot, would he 
strive for the glory of his country. The crisis of his life: Death. — 
Little effectual help could perhaps have been rendered to Burns: Pat- 
ronage twice cursed : Many a poet has been poorer, none prouder. And 
yet much might have been done to have made his humble atmosphere 
more genial. Little Babylons and Babylonians : Let us go and do 
otherwise. The market-price of Wisdom. Not in the power of any 
mere external circumstances to ruin the mind of a man. The errors of 
Burns to be mourned over, rather than blamed. The great want of his 
life was the great want of his age, a true faith in Religion and a single- 
ness and unselfishness of aim. — Poetry, as Burns could and ought to 
have followed it, is but another form of Wisdom, of Religion. For his 
culture as a Poet, poverty and much suffering for a season were abso- 
lutely advantageous. To divide his hours between poetry and rich men's 
banquets an ill-starred attempt. Byron, rich in w'orldly means and 
honours, no whit happier than Burns in his poverty and worldly degra- 
dation : They had a message from on High to deliver, which could 
leave them no rest while it remained unaccomplished. Death and the 
rest of the grave : A stern moral, twice told us in our own time. The 
world habitually unjust in its judgments of such men. With men of 
right feeling anywhere, there will be no need to plead for Burns : In 
pitying admiration he lies enshrined in all our hearts. 



REi'i:Ri:Ncr: hooks. 



BURNS. 



Arnold, Mattiikvv. The Study of Poetry. (Kssays in Crituism.) 

lii.ACKiK, J. S. Life of lUirns. ((Iieat Writers.) 

Hi.ACKii:, J. S. Scotti.sh Song. 

liKooKK, Sroi'Koki). Tlu-ology in tlie luiglish I'oets. 

Bkimk, Wai.i.ack. 'I'lie Land of Ihirns. 

C'aki.yi.k, 'riiDMAs. Hero as I'ott, and Hero as Man of Letters. 

Ciniiui'.KrsDN, John. Complete (jlossury to the I'oetiy and I'rose of 

Kohert Hums. 
Douci.AS, W. .S. Woiks of KoIkU IWiins, I'aterson tdition, 6 vols. 

(with a .Summary of his Career and (lenius). 
Kmi'.kson, R. W. Mi.scellanies. 
I'l-KcusoN, R. Poems. 
(iKoKCK, A. j. Sclii I Poems of lUims (arranged chronologically, with 

notes). 
(iii.KS, 11. Illustrations of (lenius. 
(Ikmiam, p. Ani>I'.kS()N. Nature in Hooks. (The Poetry of Toil — 

Hums.) 
llAi.iiiURioN, lliu;ii. I'urth in I'ield. 
llKNi.KY, \V. K., and I li'NDERSoN, T. V. The Poetry of Robert Hums. 

(Centenary eililion. 3 vols., witli notes. ( >i Hums in a New 

Aspect.) 
KiNcsi.KY, Charles. Pums .uul His Si hool. 
NuMoi., John. Purns. (Lncyclopanlia Pritannica.) 
Ramsay, A. Poems. 

Ri".ii>, J. P. Complete Concordam e to the Poems and Simgs of Rob- 
ert iiuins. 
RoiiKRi'.soN, L. St'leetions from Purns. (Notes and glossary.) 
Ross, J. 1). Rounii Purns' Crave : P;vans and Dirges of Many Pards 

(incluiling Longfellow, Ilolnu-s, Whittii-r, l.owill, anil Words- 

wortlO- 
Ross, J.I). Purnsi.ma. 
Sktoi'N, CiAUKiEL. Robert Purns. (Famous Scots Series.) 



REFERENCE HOOKS. 



83 



SiiAiKi', J. C. Ri)bcrt IJuiiis. (lOnglisli Men of Letters.) 

SiiAikr, J.C. Scottish Song and Hums. 

SioDDAKi), K. II. Literary Landnwuks of Ldinbiirgh. 

Wai.kkk, II. Three Centuries of Scottish Songs. 

Wai-I.acic, William. The Life and Works of Robert Murns, edited 
by Kol)ert Chambers, revised by William Wallace. 4 vols, (with 
full biography and essay on Character and (Jenius of lUirns). For 
a review of tiiis recent work and of the Centenary edition see an 
article in the Scottish Review^ K\tx\\^ 1897, by James Davidson, en- 
titled '* New Light on Burns." 



CAKLYLK. 



Helpful short accounts are John Nichol's Thomas Carlyle {^^m^\?\\ 
Men of Letters), Richard (larnett's Life of Thomas Carlyle ((ireat 
Writers), II. C. Macpherson's 77iomas Carlyle (Famous Scots Series), 
and A. II. Guernsey's Thomas Carlyle (Appleton's Handy Volume 
Scries). Those interested in the subject will enjoy T'liigel's little book 
on Thomas Carlyle''s Moral and Relii^ious J)n)elopmcftty translated fn^m 
tiie Cerman by J. (I. Tyler. Carlyle's biographer is J. i\. I'Voude. 

CiiRoNoLocicAL List oi'' Caklvi.k's Works. 

Translations, and Life of Schiller ..... 1824-1827 

I'rent h Revolution ......... 1837 

Sartor Resartus .......... 1838 

Critical and Miscellaneous Essays ...... 1839 

Chartism . . . . . . . . . . . 1840 

Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History . . . 1841 

Past and Present 1843 

Life and Letters of Oliver (!romwtll 18,^5 

Latter-Day Pamphlets 1850 

Life of John Sterling 1851 

Occasional Discourse on the Nigger Question . . '853 

History of Frifdrich IT. 1858-65 

Inaugural Address at Kdinburgh ...... 1866 

.Shooting Niagara: and after? 1S67 

Mr. Carlyle on the War 1871 

The Karly Kings of Norway : also an Kssay on the Portraits of 

John Knox 1875 



84 



REFERENCE BOOKS. 



Reminiscences by Thomas Carlyle, ed. by Froude 
Reminiscences of my Irish Journey in 1849 
Last Words of Thomas Carlyle 

Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson 
Early Letters of Thomas Carlyle .... 
Correspondence between Goethe and Carlyle 
Reminiscences by Thomas Carlyle, ed. by C. E. Norton 
Letters of Thomas Carlyle .... 



1881 
1882 
1882 
1883 
1886 
1887 
1887 
1889 



